Coupon Hacker Faces DMCA Lawsuit

Aug. 20, 2007 — -- John Stottlemire is the DVD Jon of coupon-clipping, and it's getting him in trouble.

The California man is on the working end of a federal copyright lawsuit after posting code and instructions that allow shoppers to circumvent copy protection on downloadable, printable coupons -- the type used by General Foods, Colgate, Disney and others to sell everything from soap to breakfast cereal.

The coupons are distributed by Mountain View, California-based Coupons Inc. through ad banners, e-mail and its website, coupons.com. To use them, consumers must install Coupons Inc.'s proprietary software. The software assigns each user's computer a unique identifier, which the company uses to track and control the consumer's coupon-printing practices, usually limiting each user to two coupons per product. Each printed coupon has its own unique serial code.

In a lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court in San Jose, California, last month, Coupons Inc. accuses Stottlemire of creating and giving away a program that erases the unique identifier, allowing consumers to repeatedly download and print as many copies of a particular coupon as they want.

The lawsuit also charges Stottlemire with posting tutorials on bargain-swapping sites DealIdeal.com and thecouponqueen.net on how to manually defeat the print limit, which the complaint alleges "would allow users of that software to print an unlimited number of coupons from the coupons.com website."

Stottlemire, 42, of Fremont, California, insists there was no encryption or hacking involved, and therefore he did not violate the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. "I honestly think there are big problems when you are not allowed to delete files off of your computer," says Stottlemire.

To be sure, Stottlemire's work differs from the generic online copyright battles involving movies, music or even literature: He's accused of liberating something that is already free. But Coupons Inc. argues the coupon hack is no different from cracks like "DVD Jon" Johansen's program DeCSS.