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Imagine this scenario. There are two fast food joints next door to each other: Filthy Fred's Fried Food, and Sanitary Sam's Sandwiches (names are purely fictional). Filthy Fred's has received some health code citations and there are a few documented cases of food poisoning which may or may not have been a result of eating at Fred's. Sanitary Sam's, on the other hand, has an exemplary record with the health department. Yet, for some reason, maybe because the prices are better, maybe because the food just tastes better, or maybe because people don't like being hand fed by strangers wearing full surgical scrubs, masks, and rubber gloves... the customers keep on flocking to Fred's, and Sam's gets almost no business in comparison.
In our free market, we'd say "tough" to Sam's, right? We'd tell them they need to find a way to entice the customers over to their side - lower their prices, improve their flavor, or start treating their customers better.
What if, instead of following that advice, Sanitary Sam's decided to threaten each and every customer they see going into Fred's with a lawsuit if they don't start coming to Sam's instead? What if they claimed that the customer not choosing the healthiest and safest option available to them was an actual violation of the law?
That's exactly what a company called Media Rights Technologies is doing. They, in collaboration with BlueBeat.com, developed a digital rights management technology known as X1 SeCure Recording Control. And now they are threatening both Microsoft and Apple with lawsuits for failing to buy and use their technology. MRT and BlueBeat claim that their DRM technology is superior to and more secure than those currently being used by the two companies, and for that reason, that somehow, the Digital Millenium Copyright Act compels them to use it.
I'm not sure I've ever seen such a display of poor sportsmanship in the business world. Let's all go out and develop a product which we think is superior to competing products on the market (because, um, doesn't everyone think their product is superior?), and then abuse the court system in order to force people to buy it and make us rich. Look, there are other things you have to do to earn consumers' trust and loyalty besides just having the superior product. And I'm pretty sure that threatening them with legal action is not one of those things.
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