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After reading about how companies like Google, Microsoft and Yahoo collect information about people online and use it for targeted advertising (behavioral marketing), one New York lawmaker said there ought to be a law against it. He is now working to make that a reality. The New York Times reports that Assemblyman, Richard L. Brodsky is the sponsor of a New York bill to limit how companies collect data on computer users. If the bill becomes a law, it would make it a crime — punishable by a fine to be determined — for certain Web companies to use personal information about consumers for advertising without their consent.
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I have written before that we use CopySentry to find and monitor occurrences of copy theft and infringement regarding content on our site. Today, I discovered a story on TechCrunch about a company called Attributor which offers a service very similar to CopySentry but with many added features. Attributor, which is a startup in Redwood City, California, says it can monitor the Web for copied content no matter where it may be, help publishers and media companies track it all, and provide them more options about how to handle it. I am already intrigued.
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Ian McAnerin, current president of the two plus year old Search Marketing Association of North America (SMA-NA) has announced that he will be dissolving the organization as of today mostly due to lack of resources. The association was originally founded out of concern that SEMPO, one of the major associations related to the search marketing industry, was not properly serving the needs of everyone. Since then, according to Ian, SEMPO has solved those issues.
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Net Neutrality - the principle that all Internet sites should be equally accessible to any Web user, is under attack once again. The Washington Post reports that the Justice Department has come out in opposition to the idea of Net Neutrality and endorses the idea that Internet service providers should be allowed to charge a fee for priority Web traffic. This in light of several telecom and cable companies stating that they want to have the ability to charge select users for the right to access certain content on the Internet or to do so at higher speeds than others.
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WebProNews reports that the Federal Communications Commission's official Net Neutrality inquiry ended Monday, but not before a deluge of public comments in support have flooded in. Past experiences have demonstrated that it takes very few complaints to grab FCC Chairman Kevin Martin's attention. Examples include Janet Jackson's exposed nipple during SuperBowl halftime show, what people are allowed to say and do on subscription media services, or the appropriateness of cracking jokes about "hamsterbating" before 10 PM.
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An individual who apparently works for a search marketing firm based in the United States, has stolen copy that I originally wrote and posted it not once, but multiple times on various web forums. I wrote to them about this in an attempt to get them to either remove the posts or modify them so that my original copy does not appear, however they have ignored my request.
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To tax or not to tax? That is the question. Taxing access to the Internet, access to email and the like has been looked at by the government for several years now but so far has escaped their grasp. A new bill dubbed "The Internet Tax Freedom Extension Act of 2007" was introduced in the Senate yesterday. If passed, this bill would extend the current ban on Internet access taxes for another four years.
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Have you ever been someplace besides your home or office with the old laptop in hand and attempted to "sniff out" a WiFi access so you can get online? A hotel, a coffee shop, the doctor's office, even the airport. I know I have (I didn't just admit to that did I?). Well you better be careful in the future because apparently stealing tapping into a WiFi connection that you do not have authorization to do so can get you arrested.
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I just came across a story at WebProNews regarding a new IRS proposal that could have a negative impact on e-commerce. Essentially, The U.S. Treasury Department wants to crack down on Internet businesses like eBay and Amazon.com and require them to share their customer's personal data with the Internal Revenue Service. What data specifically do they want? The obvious - names, addresses, etc. but then the not so obvious, social security numbers. You mean the IRS wants the likes of Amazon, eBay and other e-commerce stores to collect the SSN's of their shoppers? Read on to learn more about this absurd proposal.
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One can pretty much assume that if someone steals your copy, they are not too bright. The content thief is not intelligent enough to write or develop something on their own so they pilfer someone's else's hard work. However there are some that are in a class all by themselves. Not only are they too stupid to write their own content, they neglect to remove references to the place where they originally stole the content. Read on for a prime example of this.
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That is the lesson that KinderStart.com has learned as their case against Google is thrown out of court by Judge Jeremy Fogel of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California. The judge also imposed yet-to-be-determined sanctions on KinderStart legal counsel Gregory Yu for making unsupported allegations against Google. Additionally he granted Google the right to seek attorneys fees for the costs of defending against these specific charges.
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Can giant corporations not only admit they are wrong but act quickly to make the wrong right? Yes they can. The National Pork Board has done just that, issuing a letter of apology to Jennifer Laycock over a big misunderstanding. If you recall last week an attorney representing The National Pork Board had sent Jennifer Laycock a C&D order over an alleged trademark dispute. They had claimed that a shirt Jennifer sells to help raise money for the non-profit milk banks was violating their trademark "the other white meat."
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Would you ever confuse breast milk with pork? The National Pork Board apparently thinks people will and has threatened to sue my friend, Jennifer Laycock, over a shirt that is being sold to help raise money for the non-profit milk banks. The shirt reads "The Other White Milk. "The National Pork Board feels it violates their trademark "the other white meat." Give me a break! How does pork have anything to do with milk or breastfeeding for that matter?
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Would you ever confuse breast milk with pork? The National Pork Board apparently thinks people will and has threatened to sue my friend, Jennifer Laycock, over a shirt that is being sold to help raise money for the non-profit milk banks. The shirt reads "The Other White Milk. "The National Pork Board feels it violates their trademark "the other white meat." Give me a break! How does pork have anything to do with milk or breastfeeding for that matter?
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I came across an interesting article today at News.com that explores the possibility of parents being sued for their children's online activity. Well actually it is no longer a possibility but a fact with a recent lawsuit filed in San Antonio, Texas, by an assistant high school principal against two former students and their parents. The suit alleges that defamatory statements were made by the former students on their MySpace.com Web pages. Should parents be held responsible for their kid's online activity? It is a subject I have mixed feelings on.
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In the latest of frivolous lawsuits, Theresa B. Bradley, owner of Brava Corp, is suing Google for $250,000 because she was removed from the AdSense program for web publishers after clicking on her own ads. She is claiming that Google caused her "irreparable harm by damaging her reputation and the reputation of her products and services" because she is no longer allowed to display Google Ads on her site. Really?
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Old Welsh Guy (James Edwards) has a great post on catching and dealing with content thieves - those unscrupulous folks who steal other people's content and attempt to pass it off as their own. It has happened to me several times and I have dealt with them in a similar manner. James provides great tips on what evidence to gather, how to go about contacting the content thieves as well as who you should contact in addition to the thieves.
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That's right! "KinderStart Becomes KinderStopped..." a title coined by Danny Sullivan at Search Engine Watch Blog where he reports that Kinderstart.com has lost their case against Google over rankings. They do have the opportunity to amend defamation claims relating to its PageRank zero score by September 29th but it is unlikely that a move like that will be successful. I have been watching this case closely and have even written about it recently on this blog. The outcome pleases me but leads me to wonder, "who will be next?"
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On Friday, Google will try to convince a judge to dismiss what I consider to be another frivolous a lawsuit that challenges their methods for indexing and ranking Web pages. KinderStart.com originally filed suit against Google in March alleging that it suffered crippling financial harm after its Web site got dropped from the search engine’s index. This is not the first lawsuit of its kind and pending the outcome of this one may not be the last either.
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Google has fended off a lawsuit filed by a California man who claimed his Web site rankings precipitously and unfairly dropped. The plaintiff, Mark Roberts, who runs two protein drink sites (including MrProtein.com), sued Google for breach of contract. Huh? What contract? In other words, because Google would not consistently list his sites on the first page of their results, he decided to sue them over it.
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In the U.S. Government's continual quest to battle terrorism and child pornography, they have recently asked Internet companies such as Microsoft, Google and AOL to preserve records of customers' Web activity. Brian Roehrkasse, a Justice Department spokesman, states that Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and FBI Director Robert Mueller made the request last week at a meeting with industry executives. This latest move of course does not go unnoticed by privacy advocates who are complaining that the government may be intruding on the rights and privacy of law abiding citizens.
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A Pennsylvania congressman has recently introduced legislation that would ban minors from accessing social networking websites such as MySpace and Friendster as well as forbid libraries from making such access available. The bill goes by the name "Deleting Online Predators Act of 2006."
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Long Island politician Jeffrey Toback who is a member of the Nassau County Legislature is suing Google claiming that Google is profiting from child pornography. The 16-page complaint filed in state Supreme Court in Mineola states, "This case is about a multi-billion dollar company that promotes and profits from child pornography."
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A class action lawsuit has been against Yahoo! in a New Jersey federal court accusing them of encouraging click fraud through use of spyware and adware products. Additionally the suit claims that Yahoo! allows ads to be displayed on "typosquatter" Web sites that capitalize on misspellings of popular trademarks or company names. Supposedly, the plaintiffs are looking to settle out of court before case goes to trial.
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Netflix has filed a patent infringement lawsuit over Blockbuster's Online service. The Netflix filing calls for an injunction to shut down its rival's online rental service and punitive damages for the infringement. The patent mentioned in the suit covers the method in which customers choose DVD's to rent, the number of DVD's allowed at a time, and the amount of time given for their return - basically Netflix whole business model. Another David vs. Goliath battle in which this blogger is cheering for the underdog.
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ClickZ reports on one of the latest legal battles where Edina Realty, a subsidiary of HomeServices of America, has filed suit against TheMLSonline.com in U.S. District Court of Minnesota. Edina Realty claims that TheMLSonline.com bought paid search keywords on Google and Yahoo! Search Marketing, including "Edina Realty" and "EdinaRealty.com," and ran ads with "Edina Realty" in the title or description. Last week, Judge John Tunheim ruled that there was sufficient reason to send the case on to trial.
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After Google's day in court yesterday with the U.S. Government, a federal judge said he intends to require Google Inc. to turn over some information to the Department of Justice in its quest to revive a law making it harder for children to see online pornography." This ruling comes after Google initially resisted a subpoena to turn over any information because of user privacy and trade secret concerns.
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GoDaddy.com is in the news again, this time fighting a ruling that they believe creates a monopolistic environment in the Internet domain name registration industry. They are petitioning the U.S. Department of Commerce to deny final approval of the recent controversial .com registry agreement with VeriSign.
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CNet News reports that according to a bill approved by a House of Representatives panel on Thursday, political loggers would be largely immunized from hundreds of pages of confusing federal regulations dealing with election laws. The bill would amend current federal campaign finance laws to give Internet publishers many of the same freedoms that newspapers and magazines currently enjoy.
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An excellent thread (rant) has been started by Karon Thackston over at High Rankings Forum dealing with the issue of content thievery. There is an ever-increasing amount of "services" popping up all over the place that will take 300 or so characters from a web page and then create what they call "original content." Even though what they are really doing is stealing content they justify their actions by stating that they are only using a portion of the content. Yeah right!
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Seems like Internet censorship has been getting a lot of press lately, the Google/China issue attracting most of the media attention. Now the spotlight is on Craigslist, one of the largest classified ads sites on the Internet. The latest debate is over whether Craigslist should be more proactive in censoring those who post on it. The all began when some apartment listings appeared to be racially slanted. This and other events lead us to once again visit the questions, "Should the Internet be censored?"
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From Threadwatch, the New Jersey state legislature is considering a bill that would disallow anonymous speech on forums. While this only relates to New Jersey law, the proposed bill is pretty bold in its attempts and could set a precedent for other states or even national law if passed. One regular forum member and blogger makes an interesting comment, "Guess the freedom to be yourself means that you have to be yourself."
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In the latest of suits involving trademark issues with AdWords, Check 'n Go has sued Google in federal court in Ohio, stating that the search engine permits other payday lenders to purchase ads that appear when the trademarked phrase "check n go" is typed in.
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