I have turned my back on B&J ever since Ben (via TrueMajority) sent me an email imploring all libs to convince Ralph Nader not to run for president. Bye-bye, Cherry Garcia. Damn shame about the free I-Tune; that would be cool, but principle über alles. Kudos to the ice-cream sellouts for encouraging voting, though.

Natalie, you and every iTunes user gets free downloads this week. It is part of Apple's celebration of iTunes Music Store's one-year anniversary. The only drawback is busy servers at iTMS. Everyone is trying to download the selected freebies.

I also have an admission to make. I succumbed to peeking bottles today . . . and I'm someone who usually doesn't drink sodas. I did it because the iTunes/Pepsi promo runs out at the end of the month. I one-upped the quarter vision gimmick by choosing the relatively clear Sierra Mist, a lemon/lime confection. Here's the trick, you guys. Hold the bottle, horizontal, in front of you and still. Look through its bottom. Wait for the agitation to resolve. You should be able to see whether there are numbers or just letters. I read 'Sorry. Not a Winner. Try Again.' clearly several times. But, just seeing 'Again' is sufficient. I took a half-dozen bottles, all winners home. Now, if I can just get used to drinking sodas. . . .

The winning bottle caps can be used at least until the end of May, though the promotion ends this week.

I actually went out to 7-11 before Letterman this evening to waste a buck on a Big Gulp so that I could possibly win a free I-Tune. Let me check under the rim... Ohmygoodness, it DOESN'T say "try again"!!!!! I never win anything -- cool!

Just my luck: A dream dies hard. Turns out that in order to use I-Tunes, a PC user must have Windows 2000 or better and a CD burner. Leaves me out. Figures.

That's ethical.

JOE: "What do you get when you cross a 'lawyer' with a 'journalist'?

SHARK: "Someone who proudly writes about their unethical actions."


~bada-bing!

Dangit, now I have this picture in my mind of David Boies standing in the back of a 7-11 by the refrigerators, casting sideways glances to make sure the coast is clear, then holding up bottles to sneek a peak.

I would add dignified to my previous characterization.

Actually, the guys working in the store, a Rite Aid, came over and helped me. We were all hanging in front of the cold storage staring through the bottoms of soda bottles. Could be the start of a new fad.

P.S.: Things like that happen to hot chicks.

For some reason, I'm reminded of the old saying "even a blind pig sometimes finds an acorn." I'm sure your state's bar association would approve. Of course they probably wouldn't trouble themselves over something so trite, or they might be very concerned about the judgement of someone who has a problem recognizing such a minor thing.

Are we just giving Mac Diva a hard time here or do you all really think it would be illegal to look through the bottoms of the bottles to pick winning caps? Is it even unethical? 'Cause I'd do it in a heartbeat, if the prizes were any good and if I could stand the product at all.

Normally I'm the kind of person who hands back the money when I get too much change. But the way I figure it, if some company is trying to trick me into buying more of their product with longshot contests, I don't have a problem tricking them out of their prizes if they leave me the opportunity. I can't imagine under what law they could prosecute you.

[Admin: comment deleted, clearly violated house rules]

Hot chicks (with low self-esteem) gone wild! Buy it now on VHS and DVD.

Exactly, Mike. I am not a drinker of sodas. So, if I am going to buy them, I need an incentive. It is to get the free downloads from iTMS. To do that, I need winning bottle caps. So, I try to identify the winners. Seems rational enough, and (don't tell the Right Wingers) kind of cool.

Your "need" for winning bottle caps exceeds that of other customers that want to participate in the contest and not pursue an unfair advantage? That is "cool."

PS. After high school, cool tends to be a fringe benefit rather than a priority of most adults, except for maybe the hot chicks.

Your actions are not in keeping with the rules nor the spirit of the rules of the contest, nor does the aiding and abetting of the morons at Rite Aid make it so. Cheating is cheating, Theft is theft... I guess we now can see your true color, huh?
Criminal.

With 5 million songs redeemeds out of 100 million winning caps, I don't think we really need to worry about an "unfair advantage," do we?

While this technique is harder to use with darker sodas like Pepsi, it's doable, and I've done it a few times. There are websites scattered around the internet with specific instruction of the angle at which to hold the bottles, and various official people have merely grinned or making amusing comments when asked about it.

Are you all just cranky that you didn't think of it? ;-)

Oh sure Phillip, you probably ate all the Lucky Charms out of the box and left the crappy oat nuggets for the rest of the family. Ask yourself this, would you be satisfied if you were on the receiving end of this action, as either one of the marketing guys for Pepsi/Apple, or the shlub who goes into Rite-Aid after the peeking hoard has ransacked the soda section.

It's great that the Rite-Aid guys and various websites have sanctioned this activity, are these the same sources you would refer to if you actually are faced with a difficult ethical decision?

I really don't give a rat's ass, but I think if a person purports to be a professional and has assumed a role of moral authority, they certainly need to be aware of actions that are construed as unprofessional and unethical.

I would consider the act cheating and therefore unethical, but that's just me.

Ask yourself this, would you be satisfied if you were on the receiving end of this action, as either one of the marketing guys for Pepsi/Apple,

What the fuck do they care? They still get paid for the sodas. Since the whole idea of the "promotion" was to sell more drinks by implying that a given bottle might be worth more than it really is, I don't really care how they feel about having the tables turned on them. I mean, it's Pepsi were talking about here; they'd make the stuff addictive if they could get away with it. This was never a "contest" between us and them because they set up the rules so they would win no matter what.

or the shlub who goes into Rite-Aid after the peeking hoard has ransacked the soda section.

Yeah, I don't much like it when, for example, I go to the mall and all the parking is taken, but that's pretty much how life goes. Next time I get there earlier.

I don't know, maybe I've gotten cynical, but I see this as just a business transaction with all parties trying to take advantage of everybody else. Isn't that what modern capitalism is all about?

Joe, as it happens, I'm not a sugar-cereal eater.

Instead, I've probably spent more on Pepsi products in my life than you spent on your car, and I don't care if you drive a Maserati -- it's probably still true. Pepsi raised the price of a 20-oz bottle of sugar water to $1.09 to cover the cost of this promotion, and most people I watched buying bottles of Pepsi threw the cap away unexamined.

I actually retrieved a few of those caps from the garbage cans in which they were thrown and scored a free song that way, too.

I did end up at a grocery store in which the three remain yellow-capped Pepsi bottles were all losers, and knowing that, I bought one anyway.

I'm not going to blindfold myself before buying a soda just to make sure a marketing guy doesn't have to shell out $5,000,001 on a promotion instead of $5,000,000, no. And yes, I would be perfectly satisfied. Every bottle sold is a bottle sold, period. Beyond the direct remunerative benefits, every bottle walking around in public is an advertisement. Every satisfied customer is an advertisement. Every person who buys a Pepsi product that doesn't normally drink them is a potential long-term customer. Heck, they *give* away free contest pieces if you mail them a postcard!

I've studied enough marketing to know that customer acquisition costs can be steep, far steeper than is commonly believed. Pepsi's publicly-expressed disappointment with the promotion is that it did not result in enough redeemed songs, not that it resulted in too many. And some of the official people I mentioned earlier *were* PepsiCo employees.

Opening a bottle and putting it back would be unethical. Writing down the code and not buying the bottle would be unethical. Even skulking around and trying to hide your activities would be borderline unethical, but I, for one, simply walked up the cooler and made sure I bought the "correct" bottle of Pepsi. Why not? I'm not blind, and I could clearly see the winners.

If Pepsi wanted to prevent this, they could have worked out a scheme in which every bottle had a code, but only one-third of them redeemed a song. They've done it before and chose not to in this case.

Get over it, or get out and get a winning bottle of bubbly yourself. But hurry - despite MD's claims to the contrary, today is the last day of the promotion.

Phillip-
Thanks for the info, now that I know that, despite your ethical shortcomings, I wouldn't have to hide the cereal if you were visiting my house (*for the humor impaired: this is meant to be read as an attempt at humor).

I really wasn't posing the question as a situational ethics exercise and, in any case, you only answered the first half of what I really intended to be a yes or no question.

As usual, Natalie does a better job of getting to the point than I do.

Hmmm... and speaking of ethics, if it is so easy to cheat on bottle caps then why not just use Kazaa and save the trip to 7-Eleven? So much for ethical downloading. Should be an interesting discussion.

they'd make the stuff addictive if they could get away with it.

It *is* addictive. It's the caffeine, trust me. I'm in Coke detox right now. It's addictive.

And as for this unbelievably silly conversation about the ethics of looking through the bottle at the cap, I can only say, Jeeeeesus. There is no possible way you can construe a valid comparison between violating a copyright on a song and looking at a visible code at a bottle cap to see if it's a winner. One is a form of theft. The other is a form of smart consumerism.

There was an extension of the eligibility period for the iTunes/Pepsi promotion. However, It has been misreported at some sites, apparently including the one I gathered that information from. What appears to be accurate information can be read here. I have made a point of entering my remaining codes at iTMS tonight.

Persons who are Pepsi fans need not despair. A new promotion is underway.

I have copied this thread to use as a model of logical and illogical reasoning processes when I teach.

I only attempt to countenance your dubious claims of your experiences and vocations because I feel sorry for you.

Please stop abusing this courtesy.

I find it utterly absurd to call looking at the underside of bottle caps "unethical": if you can see it you can see it. If Pepsi cared they would have made them impossible to see from the outside. It wouldn't be unethical if you were a lawyer, a priest, an ethics professor or the freaking Dalai Lama. Damn.

If it were just a matter of it being in plain sight, I'd agree. It required a paragraph to describe the process and a distinct series of actions to outside what a person would normally do when selecting a bottle to discern the whether the bottle was actually a winner, repeatedly. I'm not arguing that it's a capital offense or just a social error. I'm just questioning the ethics and stating my opinion.

I guess my perspective on this is that it's a promotional campaign, all parties WANT the caps to be redeemed

Joe: Cut the crap. Your "question" was based on you not reading my first post completely, and so not understanding the "authorities" to which i referred. In fact, I answered not just your question, but address each and every single point in your post in great detail.

It takes very few words to describe the action required to ensure a winner: Look through the bottom of a bottle to read the cap. That's a paragraph?

So far in this thread you have ignored my "various official people" to ask a mocking question involving Rite-Aid employees, and turned a very short sentence and obvious (to most people) idea that takes about one second or so into "a paragraph to describe the process and a distinct series of actions to outside what a person would normally do when selecting a bottle." Both of these are misrepresentations, though it is possible that you simply weren't reading or thinking too clearly, so I'll give you the benefit of the doubt.

Ask yourself why you work so hard to mock MD -- in this thread alone I see allusions to a "blind pig," questions about MD's "dignity" (which she answered easily), an odd comment about "Hot chicks (with low self-esteem)," and mocking of the choice of the word "cool." What did MD do on this thread to deserve this treatment? Nothing that I can see.

You don't think spending a second or two tilting a bottle to read the cap is ethical. Fine, state so. But the rest of this? Dude -- chill out!

P.S. Pepsi is going to be running their billion-dollar promotion again soon. And don't look now, but they: (1) aren't susceptible to cap-peeking, because they print a code on every cap -- just like they would have done had they wanted the iTunes to be difficult to win, instead of trying to give them away, and (2) will give you a free entry if you spend $.23 on a postcard stamp.

Horrors! How unethical is that -- you don't even have to drop $1.09 on a Pepsi product!

Phillip- Sorry, I disagree. I responded to you with what I considered to be a full acknowldgement of your opinion.

With regard to the paragraph issue, I'm talking about the second paragraph of comment #2.

I wasn't ignoring your "various official people", I happen to hold the opinion that if "various official people" think it's ok to jump off, I'm still not going to do it. I don't think that's misrepresentation or unclear thinking. Do you? I think I've gone out of the way to point out that some of this is approached tongue in cheek and have acknowleged that at face value the situation is not a transgression of earth shattering proportions.

As for my treatment of MD, she is treated with the full measure of dignity and respect with which she treats others.

Have a great weekend, drink lot's of Pepsi, and, please, you chill out, too.

Excellent Response Joe.

I'm with the 'slightly unethical side'. While I don't see anything constituting criminality, I would not engage in it. For me it would be more of a risk / reward issue. The risk would be the undignified perception I would emanate as I crassly rooted through others' potential purchaces. Not worth it in my opinion.

As for treating MD "with the full measure of dignity and respect with which she treats others" I see no evidence where you have knowingly misrepresented her character or exhibited the malevolent deceitfulness that MD is known for.

I think it is funny. Both comical and absurd 'funny.' Comical because the truly ethically challenged are the loudest screechers. Someone who believes people with more melanin in their skins are less intelligent. Says Rosa Parks may have deserved beating for sparking the civil rights movement. That the civil rights movement was unnecessary anyway. Dan Precht, moral authority? Please.

The amusing aspect is how people will rush to try to elevate themselves using some truly petty pretexts. If someone has to rely on claiming being above peeping under bottle caps so as not to buy unwanted products as grounds to prove his vaunted ethics, he must not have any otherwise. Pathetic.

The reason the Pepsi iTunes promotion was extended was because not enough caps were being redeemed. The overwhelming majority ended up in landfills. Some people are saying that is because the bottles arrived in stores late. But, it could reflect that only a minority of buyers of the product knew about the promotion or were interested in it. I got a late start but did my little bit to make the promotion successful. I'm sure Apple and Pepsi appreciate that since having people redeem the caps (and buy the product) was their goal.

The risk would be the undignified perception I would emanate as I crassly rooted through others' potential purchaces.

I take this risk twice a week at the market, as I examine and compare the fruits, vegetables, and cuts of meet on the shelves, so that I get the best of each for my money. Why should I pay for a bruised melon when I can buy one that's perfect? Should I feel bad that someone else might "get stuck" with the bruised melon that I leave behind? Should I feel bad that someone else might not examine the fruit at all before placing it his/her cart?

I also do the same thing when buying *anything*. I make sure I get the best one the store has.

I guess that makes me unethical?

Nice try bhw. I had already thought of the analogy. It doesn't fit. Most consumers won't buy a bruised melon. Most consumers wouldn't buy a leaking soda pop either. No two melons are alike. Soda bottles are alike, except for the hidden prize inside the cap. By peeking, especially in the arduous manner described here, you violate the spirit of the contest.

A point of clarification for those who may have problems with reading comprehension: I didn't say I was ethically above a minimal effort to cheat a fellow Pepsi consumer out of an iTune. I said the risk wasn't worth the reward. I might occasionally pass gas or remove a booger from my nasal passage, but I find the shameless display of this type of behaviour unseemly.

All I can say about the slanderous allegations in comment #33 is that they are unfounded, have never even been attempted to be proven, and are the product of a mental instability.

Dan: The risk would be the undignified perception I would emanate as I crassly rooted through others' potential purchaces.

So you're not ashamed to do it, just ashamed to get caught.

Yeah, that's ethical.

Jeezus, did I really write "cuts of meet"? Type in haste and pay the price.

The analogy works just fine for me, Dan. People buy imperfect fruit all the time. I buy apples with dings in them, even though I'd prefer the ones without, but when that's all that's left, that's what I buy. The people who buy the "perfect" fruit get more for their money.

Same with people who peek at the bottle tops.

JR: "Yeah, that's ethical".

Thick head JR? Again from comment #35, "I didn't say I was ethically above a minimal effort to cheat a fellow Pepsi consumer out of an iTune."

Again, Pawing through soda bottles in a public convenience store just to "win" a download seems beneath my dignity. Just as picking a nickel out of a public urinal might be. Got a problem with that?

I applaud Joe and Natalie for their hyper-ethical sensitivity in this instance, but didn't claim to be in that catagory. I would consider myself to be 'above the pack' here at BC in other areas of ethicality. Truth telling for instance.

Frankly, a person who applauds Rosa Parks being assaulted has no dignity.

Dan Precht previously tried to disown his very telling comments on the Rosa Parks thread by claiming that he was a different person. That lie was laughable, but I think it preferable to his current pose.

on coke being addictive - I am not proud nor lying when i say i drink AT LEAST 8 litres of Diet Coke per day. And i'm only 9 stone also. How can this be so? Fucked if i know. But it would appear it does have addictive qualities, for sure. Especially since i stopped drinking the "hard stuff" (ie booze etc). Maybe it's a substitute or something. The hell i care. I don't wake up in the morning going "oh, man, i shouldnt have had that last coke. That guy will never talk to me again" So all this coke drinking and NOT ONE free downlaod on account of it all. That's what happens when you live in Northern Ireland, man. On the plus side, i probably got my guts melted. Spose thats always something

bhw: Here are some reasons I might use to rationalize the 'gray' area of peeking at bottle caps: The contest doesn't explicitly say you can't. The store doesn't say you can't. You don't feel bad about doing it.

Those would be fine with me, but the melon rationalization does not work. I think you know this but refuse to admit it. Again, I'm not saying peeking at bottle caps = evil doing. But I do have a clear concience thumping melons that I wouldn't have peeking at bottle caps. I see both sides. really.

re comment#39: "I would consider myself to be 'above the pack' here at BC in other areas of ethicality. Truth telling for instance."