Circuit City Tries To Cover Up Media Ripping Program

August 5th, 2006 Davis Posted in DRM |

After the Consumerist published a photograph of Circuit City advertising a DVD burning program, the blogosphere quickly went a buzz about the potential DMCA violations. With the story being both Slashdotted and Dugg, Circuit City quickly responded to the mounting publicity by claiming that the sign was unauthorized and that no such program exists.

In an interview with the Red Herring, Bill Cimino, Circuit City’s Director of Corporate Communications said that “That sign was not an authorized sign, wasn’t issued by the store support center, and the information on the sign is not correct.” The article then goes on to state “only 20 stores in the nation offer the company’s newest copying program, which allows a customer to bring in up to 100 CDs and have the contents transferred to DVD.”

Circuit City can try to deny the existence of this program all they want, but the truth of the matter is that they have been solicitating and accepting orders for the service for over a month through their Get Digital “partnership.” Originally I found out about the service, when Smorty71 received an early email solicitation advertising the service.

If Circuit City wants to take on the wrath of the RIAA that’s fine with me, but for them to come out and deny the existence of this program is a really dumb PR move. At the very least they should have the sense to take down the website advertising the service if they want to deny it. Cimino may claim that this is for up to 100 CDs, but the minimum order online is 50 CDs and they only offer the best 99 cent pricing for orders of 400+ CDs. I can understand why Circuit City would want to back away from this issue, but it’s not right to put the blame for the the controversy on some retail store clerk, when it clearly involves decision makers higher up then that. Who would be stupid enough to ever pay that much for this sort of service is beyond me, but if Circuit City is trying to overcharge customers for a rip and burn service, then they need to open and transparent about what they are doing instead of trying to hide behind some unauthorized sign.