WebMink
Simon Phipps's personal commentary

Cinema Self-Immolation

My local cinema complex is run by Odeon. Wouldn't it be cool if I could check out what was showing there on the web, or even book tickets online? Well, there's an Odeon website but I can't get beyond the advertising splash screen in either Safari or Firefox, and heeding the advice of the US government, the mandate of my employer and my own security sense I don't run Internet Explorer. I gather even that wouldn't help me much as the site is way too clever for its own good.

This is actually a well-known problem and an enterprising British programmer called Matthew Somerville, at his own considerable expense, programmed a screen-scraped 'accessible' version of the site as a protest to Odeon at the stupidity of their web design. I used to use his site to look at what was showing at my local Odeon, and thus Matthew actually generated a good deal of revenue for Odeon as I and thousands of people like me used his site as their only means of online contact with Odeon.

Instead of listening to their customer's complaints and fixing it, and perhaps even thanking Matthew for allowing them to continue trading despite having a web site that sucks (in a pretty way, of course), what have they done? Sent Matthew a cease-and-desist letter. Seems too many people were using his site. What that tells me is that they have a problem - and it's not Matthew. They have lost our family's business - none of us can check their schedule any more.

posted at 6:33 PM (UK) | |