Is DeepDiscount.com politically "censoring" what's available in their 20% off DVD sale?...

[cascadiance]

Twice a year DeepDiscount.com has a big sale where you can get 20% off any "released" DVDs that they have (doesn't apply to preorders). I'm a big DVD collector and this is one of the best deals to take advantage of during the year.

I noticed something rather strange though. There are a whole slew of DVDs that are listed as "preorders" with a release date of 11/30/07 which actually aren't preorders. They've already been released. And curiously a huge chunk of them look to be controversial political documentaries like the following titles. Go to the following "upcoming release" page and go forward to see what I mean:

http://www.deepdiscount.com/viewcategory.htm?categoryId=463697&start=217&sortby=&count=#listtop

11/30/07 titles (unavailable for purchase now at DD.com for this sale):


9/11 - Press For Truth
911 Mysteries - Part 1: Demolition
The ACLU - Freedom Files
Aftermath: Unanswered Questions From 9/11
American Blackout
American Jobs
The Big Buy - How Tom DeLay Stole Congress
Bush Family Fortunes: The Best Democracy Money Can Buy
The Cult of the Suicide Bomber
Disinfo.con
Disinformation - The Complete Series
Escape to Canada
Exploring the Da Vinci Code
Gay Republicans
How Arnold Won the West
In Debt We Trust
Islam What the West Needs To
Marshall Mcluhan - Mcluhan's Wake
Maybe Logic: The Lives and Ideas of Robert Anton Wilson
New Orleans: Big Easy to Big Empty
Outfoxed
The Robert Greenwald Documentary Collection
Stupidity
Terrorstorm: A History of Government Sponsored Terrorism
This Divided State
Totally Decoded
Uncle Goddamn
Unconstitutional: The War on Our Civil Liberties
Uncovered: The Whole Truth About the Iraq War
Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Price

The good news is that until the end of tomorrow, you can still get 20% off on many of these titles on another site that also has 20% off (I think owned by the same parent company - DVDPlanet.com). Doesn't have no sales tax for us California residents, etc. like we like it here, but if you want these titles, go here instead:

http://www.dvdplanet.com/

Use the following code to get the 20% off:

20offsale

If enough of us buy them here, perhaps it will alert the Deepdiscount.com folks that they are LOSING money due to censorship by one or more of their employees! Probably might not hurt to call DeepDiscount.com and ask about this too!

[Toucano]

1. Dear God.

It's likely just a coding error.


"Lets drive somebody out of business because their database is messed up!" Go liberalism!!!!

[cascadiance]

4. A few titles here and there I'd agree with you and if they were all "random"...

But it seems mysterious that a whole slew of these titles have been set to 11/30/07 "by mistake" when just about all of them have a political theme to them, or at least questioning Christianity (with the Davinci Code theme for some of them). Only about one or two other titles were mislabeled that way for this release date.

I think it is certainly worth a call to them to have them throw the question up the ladder to their superiors.

[Toucano]

5. It's easy.

If I've got my database sorted by category, Political Documentaries, for example, and I am filling in the release dates I could easily enter the same release date for all in that category.

Especially if my phone rings and its 10 to 5 on a Friday afternoon, and I just want to fill in that field, click save, and get home. Maybe I even tell myself I'll fix it on Monday.

It could be a mistake.
It could be laziness.
It could be a conspiracy to keep liberals from getting a 20% discount on a movie our company makes money selling.

[Joanne98]

2. When I saw Fahenheight 911 they rang the ticket up to another movie!

I was just wondering about the low movie sales for Lions and Lambs. The filmmakers should do an investigation!

[cascadiance]

3. Hah. They did that to me ALSO for that movie!

There are a lot of scum out there trying to do the devil's work now! We need to catch 'em and shine a light on them when we can!

[Trillo]

6. I know little about the DVD distribution biz,

but do know a little more about the book publishing biz. (far from an expert)

Anyway, it strikes me that you just ran up against the same problem that many self-pubbed novelists have. Distribution is controlled by a few international corporate entities.

I would guess those DVDs not getting the discount are coming from small producer network(s), not the 'favored' one on sale from the predominant company (the corporatist), and this relative size issue could be a mechanism that perhaps allows the retailer to claim to customers "all DVDs on sale" followed by fine print of what the exceptions are.

I suspect the sale is for DVDs coming from one particular producer/publisher/distributor network. Could that rise to a standard of political censorship? Sure, but 20% doesn't really seem like "blow out" prices that would drive a huge increase in demand for one over the other, anyway, more like the kind of sale that keeps regular customers returning.

[cascadiance]

9. I think there's at least three different distributors with discs on this page...

Knowing how DD organizes it's part numbers, I think they are organized by Part number. There's at least three different ones in this section. "RYK" I think refers to perhaps Ryko. Not sure what "DNF" is, but that's another one. So either all of these different publishers are linked with the same distributor or perhaps there's another reason. It just seems a bit strange that just about all except one or two of these discs are political topics.

There might be a real mundane and weird reason for this happening, but it still is probably worth calling about. Haven't had time to do it myself. Just ordered the ones I wanted from DVD Planet, in case that distributor would go over there and have them move the date to on their site as well and make them completely unavailable.

Even if it is a mundane non-intentional and non-political reason that triggered this, it is probably worth tracking down to make sure that there isn't someone behind the scenes working against our interests. It might be a good way to get them exposed and get fired, in case they are a low level employee that might try to screw with stuff there for similar reasons in the future.

The more wingnuts, if that is who is working behind the scenes here know that when they do this sort of thing, if it was politically motivated, that they are going to get caught and nailed for it, hopefully that will stop the sneakiness in other areas too where the damage to our interests could be greater.

[Tummler]

7. The culprit could be weirdness at the distributor

I'm a big fan of the semi-annual DeepDiscount and DVD Planet sales too. :hi:

DeepDiscount listings seem to be more sensitive to behind-the-scenes distributor weirdness than most other internet DVD merchants.

If a price drop is scheduled for a title, DeepDiscount often flags it as a "new release" that can only be pre-ordered. But it doesn't look like that's the case here.

If the studio behind these titles is changing distributors, that could explain the "new release" indication.

And finally, every once in a while, a publisher or distributor will ask not to be included in the DeepDiscount sale. I recall that Media Blasters has done this once or twice.

[Feron]

8. According to the DVDTALK FAQ,

some studios do not want their titles in the 20% off sale. Therefore they aren't available for purchase during the duration of the sale.

Since the sale ends 11/25, DD probably is holding those titles until 11/30 to avoid any potential errors.

ETA: Pre-orders do not apply to the discount.