Extra coupons attract DMCA lawsuit

A MOUNTAIN VIEW, California company that gives away free coupons to consumers over the Internet filed a lawsuit against one of its users for allegedly violating the Digital Millenium Copyright Act (DMCA) to get extra coupons.

Coupons Inc. distributes discount coupons on its website coupons.com and markets them to consumers through online ads and email. Bargain hunters can download and print out promotional coupons for groceries and household products offered by major brands such as Procter & Gamble, General Foods, etc.

To get the coupons, consumers have to download and install Coupon Inc.'s proprietary software that uniquely identifies and tracks each user, typically limiting them to printing two coupons per product.

Recently, however, Coupons Inc. filed a lawsuit in Federal court in San Jose, California, against one John Stottlemire of Fremont, California, alleging that he created and distributed means to bypass its user tracking software, thus enabling consumers to obtain additional coupons.

In support of its complaint, Coupons Inc. claims that the defendant posted instructions about how to defeat its controls on the bargain shopping websites DealIdeal.com and thecouponqueen.net.

The lawsuit alleges that Mr. Stottlemire thereby violated the provisions of the DMCA, which prohibits the unauthorized circumvention of technological measures intended to protect intellectual property.

Coupons Inc. asks for disclosure of the names of people who downloaded any related software Mr. Stottlemire might have created, and seeks unspecified damages.

For his part, Mr. Stottlemire demures, saying that he couldn't have violated the DMCA because he didn't do any reverse engineering or decryption. "Nothing was hacked. Nothing was decoded..." he said.

"All I did was erase files or registry keys," he said, adding "I honestly think there are big problems when you are not allowed to delete files off of your computer."

So... here we have a discount coupon marketing company that bases its entire business model on a piece of software that uniquely identifies, tracks and controls all of its users.

It places that application under the direct control of its customers by downloading the software onto their PCs, apparently without logging their signup and activity to a central database that it controls.

Then it's surprised and chagrined to find that one of them figured out how to defeat their controls simply by deleting its application software and downloading it again.

This should be fun to watch. µ

L'INQ
Wired