endangeredomega wrote: Hey, it's only illegal if you get caught, right?
More accurately, it's only illegal if it is deemed to be a violation of intellectual property. Woot isn't hiding anything. They are a big business, they prominently display all of the designs they are selling, and they even show their exact sales numbers per shirt. It is an extremely transparent business, and this is the first time in my three and a half or so years that I've seen anything like this happen (The one from a few weeks ago was related to a trademark that Woot wasn't aware of I believe). Woot has lawyers for a reason, and while they might make mistakes here and there, they seem to be pretty good at finding the line that cannot be crossed. Perhaps, as narfcake suggested above, the issue with this one was in the title. Regardless, I'm not sure why this would be a moment to reconsider their entire business model, which has clearly been working for quite some time.
People are constantly complaining about one thing or another in derbies. Too much pop culture, too many cute animals, whatever else. I'm still waiting to hear what you want. In January, 5 pop culture reference shirts printed (4 of which were dailies). An additional 4 cute animals printed, which leaves 12 other designs. That's well over half, for you folks playing along at home. Tgentry made the point recently that only about 1/3 of what prints from derbies is pop culture. That number has been even significantly less recently.
(*I also wanted to add the point here that, even within the pop culture and cute animal designs, a lot of different styles were represented. So while I'm grouping them together, I don't mean to imply that they are somehow the same, because they really aren't. I simply put them together since people tend to lump them into categories when complaining)
Pop culture shirts have been around since the dawn of woot time. The first shirt woot printed (excluding the launch tee) was a video game reference. So, no matter when you came here, pop culture was part of woot, and yet you still decided to stay. Maybe you made it your mission to change the site because you didn't like how it was running when you first saw it, but I would guess that it's more likely you saw something that you liked, despite the fact that there was pop culture all around you. That's because there were a lot of other things all around too. Woot has always been about variety, and while people might get upset and say that all the shirts these days are the same and nothing prints but pop culture, that is just objectively wrong. Maybe woot isn't printing shirts you like these days, but that doesn't mean that all the shirts are the same. So my suggestion to you is to start turning your negative statements into positive ones. Instead of saying you hate pop culture references, start making comments on the pre-derby thread about types of designs you would love to see. Start a thread about it that isn't titled "Have you noticed how much woot sucks these days?" Figure out what was printing on woot that made you love it before that's missing now, and try to do something to bring it back.
