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Microsoft Legal Wants Me to Take Down THEIR OWN CONTENT

I received a surprising voicemail from Microsoft Legal – they demand that I take down the content at www.theultimatebug.com since it points to a promotion that’s no longer running. Click below to hear the voicemail, courtesy of GrandCentral:

There’s only one problem (actually more): this is not my content, it was set up and is controlled by Microsoft, or an entity that created the promo for Microsoft. The promotion it refers to, The Ultimate Steal was actually quite generous, giving MS Office away to students for $60. My post on the subject was partly promotional, partly poking fun at MightySoft since they could not even get the promo site up working properly:

The countdown reached zero, and started again. And again… several times, even after the advertised opening of the promotion, users were not able to get in, they were just staring at the recycled counter. A commenter @ CrunchGear called it The Ultimate Publicity Scam. I thought it was just a bug, so I created www.theultimatebug.com and pointed to to the MS promo site.

Now they want me to take it down. I can’t, since it’s not my site. The Ultimate Bug domain points to 209.162.191.152, which appears to belong to Peek Consulting LLC, in Louisville, KY. Perhaps MS or Digital River worked with them to create the promotion … I have no clue. Ultimatesteal.com is owned by Microsoft, and while they rerouted the main page to an end-of-life notice, the original content, the one Microsoft Legal wants me to take down is still available here: http://www.theultimatesteal.com/store/msshus/ContentTheme/pbPage.microsoft_office_ultimate

Dear Microsoft, feel free to take your content down any time. And perhaps next time use a smarter agency.

Of course this makes me wonder: what if I really had duplicated the content on my site? Could MS legally force me to remove it, even though it clearly identifies the end-date as May 16 2208? I know some attorneys who read this blog, perhaps you’ll be kind enough to jump in with your comments. Thanks in advance.

Update (6/13) : Someone at Microsoft is reading this blog, after all.  209.162.191.152 which theultimatebug.com was pointing to now shows ‘under construction’.  The “bug” lost its meaning after MS fixed the error anyway, and now the promotion itself is over… I need to figure out what to do with this cool domain.  In the meantime I am redirecting it to the original post that started it all.

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Comments

  1. So if the promotion is over, why does the site now show a $60 promotion for Office Ultimate 2007? With no end date in sight? MicroFAIL?

  2. The main page is now redirected to the end-notice, and the deep link I showed:
    http://www.theultimatesteal.com/store/msshus/ContentTheme/pbPage.microsoft_office_ultimate

    clearly lists the end-date. Have you found another page without the end-date?

  3. The Microsoft website also still has the promotion. Definitely MicroFAIL.

  4. The version of theultimatebug.com that I see doesn’t mention that the promotion is over, or that it has an ending date.

    Sorry for not answering in my last comment; you posted it while I was writing.

  5. Do you see a red circle in the upper right corner with the date inside?

  6. I don’t remember exactly, but I don’t think so. Now I see an Under Construction page on theultimatebug.com and an end-of-life page on theultimatesteal.com

  7. There is that fear again… I would hate to be Microsoft. To have to live in such enormous fear. It just can’t be a good thing. I am talking about they are so scared and worried that someone is going to steal something from them and they won’t make another billion or two this quarter. In the mean time millions of users over the world are now hooked on Ubuntu and other Non-Microsoft OS’s and countless others are seeking to get away from the MS fear mongers. Hang in there, they will leave you alone and find someone else to pick on tomorrow

    rocknnmike

Trackbacks

  1. […] (6/13/08): Microsoft Legal asked me to remove the content at http://www.theultimatebug.com, without realizing it was just a forwarding domain, […]

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