Best Buy vs YouTuber

Run time: 04:40 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uLX2tD8M1Ao   Posted on YouTube: July 08, 2010 By YouTube Member: unclenalts Views on YouTube: 768   Posted on DU: July 08, 2010 By DU Member: activa8tr Views on DU: 929

 
"Did you hear about Brian Maupin? The guy who made the hysterical HTC Evo vs iPhone4G video, and then got spanked by Best Buy? What do you think?"


Free speech on Youtube versus corporate rights to take action against an employee for non work activities NOT identified with his employer.

Also within the video, this film-maker, (not the employee) was traffic fined for video he shot of BestBuy's Geek squad van speeding.
(Geek Squad driver had reported him to police.)

Both are issues of free speech versus the large corporation!

.....until they can nail him on a performance issue probably..

http://www.tradingmarkets.com/news/stock-alert/bby_best-buy-gives-reprieve-to-worker-behind-snarky-videos-ceo-brian-dunn-calls-videos-unacceptable-b-1027650.html


BRILLIANT YOUTUBE

Okay, so here's this Best Buy employee who managed to create a viral video that generated 3.3 million hits. BB asserts that he was being fired (at least initially) for a few videos that did name BB in a disparaging manner. So maybe that was pretty stupid of the employee. Ah, youth. But doncha think that they could have pulled this guy aside and said, hey, you were out of line on those videos that were disparaging. Bad boy. Hold our your knuckles for us to rap. Okay, now that we've got that out of the way, would you be interested in joining our corporate marketing department and create viral videos with a positive spin for BB? What a way to turn lemons into lemonade. But, no, they have to go punitive, because that's the way of corporate America these days.

This IS Corporate America we're talking about here. They OWN this country. They own the politicians, the courts, and most everything else because Americans have been brainwashed since Ronnie RayGun was in office to bow to them as the true leaders and ultimate owners of this nation.

Why the Hell should they be nice to anybody but themselves? THEY ANSWER TO NOBODY.

They can fire this guy on the spot and replace him with a good little Stepford Employee tomorrow morning!

Celtic Merlin
Carlinist

And Barack Obama is just another tool in the tool box that's dismantling America and devolving this nation to a pre-industrial revolution society. Corporate media controls the message to feign fairness and to manufacture consent. The petite bourgeoisie is expanding. Lower middle class supes on the right imagine themselves a hoard of John Galts and Ayn Rands. Morons all.

I do not live near a major city, so Best Buy is about all we have for electronics.
As much as I hate myself for it, I must go to Walmart on occasion because they have run most of their competitors out of business.
We have basically one supplier for so many things in this country that they have virtual monopolies.

There are some areas that are still competitive, but many sectors are already monopolies.
Our government has stood by cheering while more and more industries are concentrated.

And as the concentration goes up, jobs are sent overseas. What are we going to do about it? probably not much.

Many retailers have free shipping, even better prices for computers, etc.

I should talk, I just bought a new TV 3 months ago at Bestbuy, but computers and other easily shipped items, I'll shop around, and buy on-line.

Fact is the First Amendment applies to the government.

It states

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.<1>

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Amendment_to_the_United_States_Constitution

Generally, unless there is some other law or some state provision that applies to private companies, the First Amendment doesn't prevent employers from firing you for exercising your free speech rights.

Now, used to be that in Germany, private persons had to respect free speech rights except as to certain hate speech (NAZI speech, anyone?) I don't know whether Germans still have that right.

Basically, employees in our country have very few rights. We have at-will employment, for example. Employment rights in our country are really few and far between. We are in bad shape here. Thank Republicans and right-wing Democrats for that.

Americans are isolated. We travel a lot, but we don't learn much as we travel because -- Americans are too lazy to learn to speak foreign languages. Shame on us. (I speak two foreign languages and can read a third. It's not that hard to learn. Try it. You'll be surprised what you learn.)

So, if Americans do not have basic rights like a reasonable amount of free speech in and out of the workplace, they have only their own laziness, ignorance and unwillingness to demand them to blame.