Slashdot Mirror
Utah Bans Keyword Advertising
Eric Goldman writes "Last month, Utah passed a law banning keyword advertising. Rep. Dan Eastman, the Utah legislator who sponsored the law, believes competitive keyword advertising is the equivalent of corporate identity theft, causing searchers to be (in his words) 'carjacked' and 'shanghaied' by advertisers. He also takes a swipe at the EFF, dismissing its critique of the law as 'criticism from the fringes.'"
Stupid advertisers.
Seriously, wtf is wrong with this picture?
I got bored reading the articles and I couldn't find the answer immediately. Which campaign donor paid for this, or which Mormon edict is behind it? It's obviously one or the other.
Because passing a stupid law like this in Utah will actually have any real effect on the use of keyword advertising.
The only real effect it will have is making things harder for advertising companies, by forcing them to filter out the dolts in Utah before serving up an ad.
This is nothing more than some 2-bit politician trying to make a name for himself, and won't do any good whatsoever for any of the citizens that were responsible for putting his sorry ass in office in the first place.
Perl - $Just @when->$you ${thought} s/yn/tax/ &couldn\'t %get $worse;
ZZZzzzzz......
Physics is nothing like religion. If it was, we'd have an easier time trying to raise money!
Just when having 'mormon' was really starting to pay off ..
In Soviet Utah, Mormons call YOU a fringe group. OK, that was rude, but it sure was funny when South Park did it.
Fascism trolls keeping me up every night. When I starts a preachin', he HITS ME WITH HIS REICH!
The CB App. What's your 20?
I hate politicians, but I hate advertisers, too. Ack! (head explodes)
They have already proven they can handle themselves with difficult governments.
First Google China edition
Now Google Utah edition.
So, who will be first to purchase AdWords for "Dan Eastman?"
I just googled him and got no advertisements, so looks like he's even cheaper than the average politician!
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
Utah is one of the places used to simulate Mars landings.
"To those who are overly cautious, everything is impossible. "
Rep. Dan Eastman...believes competitive keyword advertising is the equivalent of corporate identity theft, causing searchers to be (in his words) 'carjacked' and 'shanghaied' by advertisers.
Well, at least he's not appropriating the name of an entire city to make his point.
I didn't know that going to google.com was like going to the Oracle at Delphi. A spiritual endevour to commune with raw, unaldulterated universal truth. I was under the horribly mistaken impression that google built, maintained an operated a tool that many people found useful, and all they asked as payment was their users left over attention. That leftover attention then being sold to those who might find such vast quantities of unused attention valuable. Thank you for disabusing me of this notion, and helping me realize that google, is akin to a public service. God forbid that a person going into someone else's place of buisness be subjected to offers from affiliated businesses. I much prefer the Mormon position of people being denied adaquate legal healthcare in a commercial health establishment based on particular whims related to imagined magic.
That's just what I though when my senator (Byrd) proposed a constitutional amendment allowing school prayers - it a) Doesn't stand a snowball's chance in hell of passing, and 2) He gets brownie points for suggesting it. So in the end, nothing really changes except the good senators reputation amongst a certain constituency. Pure politics.
try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }
... at least for those of us living here in Utah. They've caught a bit of flak from members of the Bloghive in these parts, especially with the hackjob responses they've got going on. Of course, these are the same guys who tried to get a special E911 tax on VoIP and almost passed statewide franchise agreements, so you've got to know they're not entirely with it.
There is a difference between "insightful" and "inciteful" other than spelling.
Someone put an Adword in on google for "Douchebag" and it linked to http://www.daneastman.com/
--
Which campaign donor paid for this, or which Mormon edict is behind it? It's obviously one or the other.
I think you might be onto something here.. It looks like follow the money. Now if I can find some data on the new registery mentioned in the article and who profits...
Snipped from the article....
Owners of eligible words can register the terms in a new registry by paying a nominal fee.
The truth shall set you free!
It has been horribly overused and corrupted, but surely laws pertaining to Internet have to be decided on national or, better, international level. With 50 states passing conflicting laws, soon no employee of a tech company will be able to travel across state lines without risk of arrest.
The Utah legislators are confusing trademarks with owning a word. The purpose of a trademark is to identify a product uniquely, not to give a company control of a word.
Advertising a competing product when potential customers search for a trademark is exactly what trademarks were supposed to accomplish.
Utah has the Internet? When did that happen... ;)
dnuof eruc rof aixelsid
"Specifically, the law creates a new intellectual property right called an "electronic registration mark," defined as a "word, term, or name that represents a business, goods, or a service."
This is a law which hopes to prevent businesses, especially those who made a useful tool to aggregate left over attention, from telling interested people about competing offers and businesses. This law is quitiscentially unAmerican in the sense that it's opposed to the free exchange of ideas, and to obtaining a competative advantage. It's positively feudal, and anyone who for a moment entertains a notion of legitimacy of such a law should be shot with a musket. Think of what the people get, the for the low low price of momentary curiosity which they may or may not act on a free useful tool, rather a variety of them, and a snap-shot of competing offers. The public domain of ideas belongs, wait for it you malignant asshat, the PUBLIC. Considering the fantastic deal the public is getting, via free sweet tools, ceeding yet another area of the public market place of ideas to dipshits that appearently give money to Mormon whores (the bad kind), those dipshits owe us all one motherfucking assload of everlasting awesome. A cure for cancer, cheap fusion power, something really magnificent for a new dominion over what we already collectively own: The knowledge that Plumber Bob is a plumber, and Dan's Plumbing offers the same services, maybe better, and maybe at better prices.
Ignorance is not a virtue, and the idea that a privaleged few should be able to force it on the larger world is truly insane.
The issue the Utah legislators are against is (the following example is fictitious) Sony buying keyword advertisements for the "XBOX" keyword - in hopes of getting them to buy PS3s instead. The idea behind the law is that, in this example, Microsoft own the XBOX trademark, and by Sony buying ads for "XBOX", they are 'benefiting from another person's trademark'. Or something like that. To be more specific, it might be the case the Sony pay more, and people typing "XBOX" see ads for Sony, and not Microsoft. The legislators see that as "hijacking a trademark".
Now, this is an interesting issue. In essence, this is a case of one entity making use of anothers' trademark for profit. Which does seem a little 'off', at least if you value trademarks (I do, and I disvalue copyright and patents, at least in their current incarnation in the US). However, as pointed out in the past, the real issue isn't what is 'fair', but what is possible. Implementing this law is a lesson in futility. In other words, Utah don't get it. But they are not the complete morons implied by most people's reaction to the Slashdot title for this story.
You know what they say... regulating the internet is like teaching a pig to sing - it wastes your time and annoys the internet.
Software patents delenda est.
What about existing trademark law prevents it from being applied here?
-josh
There's keyword advertising, and there's keyword advertising. I don't have an issue with google showing sponsored ads off to the side... but not embedded within the results.
But the greatest scum of all keyword adverts is in the vein of 'gator' et al, that rewrote webpages and literally embedded ads for competitors right within a businesses own website's content - a least from the end user experience perspective.
The new 'gator' is that 'intellitext' crap, and frankly its just as bad, perhaps worse because its coming from the website instead of being the result of malware I can remove. (Sure I can generally block intellitext crap with FF using adblock with some effort, but that's beside the point.)
I hate playing 'dodge the link with my mouse' with 'legitimate' website content, blogs, and so forth. I would support a law that banned that sort of page rewriting to embed advertising links.
I've never met a user that found those ads anything but annoying. (Especially on older systems where running the javascript and building the popup would take several seconds, like my old G3 ibook, a delay triggered by simply letting the mouse glide over a link by mistake... not click on it, just drift over it)
By the sound of it, it doesn't actually ban keyword advertising, it just limits a bit.
Returning Bob's Hardware in a search for 'Dan's Hardware' based off from the word 'hardware' might be ok. 'hardware' is a rather generic word, after all. Walmart buying a link based off of 'Target', 'Sears', or 'K-Mart' would not be.
Still, I could easily see this law being struck down by a judge with a wide interpretation of the 1st, as long as no actual misrepresentation is made.
I don't read AC A human right
If you've ever tried to find true "Free Ringtones" you'll probably have an idea of the frustration that lead to this sort of law. It took me along time to identify Audacity 123 software, QualComm Purevoice software, BitPIM software, and a data cable as a means to create real free ringtones for my phone. Virtually every link to free ringtones had you buying a service are getting "free" ringtones only if you signed on to buy others. This is false advertising, and is an area that makes the internet useless. Again that what make the Internet the most useful (powerful search and association capability) brings it to its news for some intended purposes. Just banning the use of the word free in advertising would help. Though this would probably be impossible to implement and enforce.
Use your head, can't you, use your head,
You're on earth, there's no cure for that - S. Beckett
Otherwise known as the UGF, will be setup via Google Checkout. In order for Utah visitors to see search results provided by google or pages where ad revenue is generated via Google Adwords, the user must pay the amount that would have been generated if the ads could have been shown in addition to a $0.75 processing fee per transaction. Visitors looking to save money may Pre-Fund in a minimum amount of $25 with only one $0.75 fee being charged for the transaction, when the balance goes below $1.00, your account will be automatically funded for an additional $25 plus $0.75 transaction fee.
Adsense customers may also setup a Utah Free Zone where the Adsense is not generated for Utah visitors but the loss of revenue is charged to the web host, Utah Restricted Zone where the Adsense javascript will prevent any Utah visitors from viewing the content and optionally Utah Pay Zones where users are required to subscribe in order to view content and the javascript will redirect them to the proper signup/payment page at the rates set by the webmater.
Thank you Utah for opening up new business models and revenue streams at the expense of your residents!
There are hundreds and hundreds of advertisements that go out every day in every media where they specifically identify their competitor and bash them in their ads. Like in, "Acme Garage changes oil for 9.99$, Superior Garage charges 19.99$". There are store brands of products that mimic a copytighted product. For example, the store brand mouth wash Equate specifically says, "Same active ingredient as in Scope(R)TM". Why leave them all out and bring only the electronic ads into the purview of the law?
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
Consider -- a state stupidly votes through a law that might kneecap Google's earnings. The champion of the law even insults the EFF.
Looks like a typical case of Microsoft removing a competitor's oxygen supply. It is not a conspiracy since Msoft are documented as astroturfers...
You might be right in arguing "Never assume malice if it can be explained by stupidity" -- but in today's world even Utah law makers should have more insight.
Karma: Excellent (My Karma? I wish...:-( )
Searching on a term that brings up a competitor's product isn't a problem, it's just an extension of the example I mentioned.
Eastman sounds like the kind of politician Ed Markey, from my home state of Massachusetts is - utterly clueless. Markey is the chairman of the House Subcommitte on telecommunications and the internet but he's as dopey as Eastman - trying to regulate something he has little knowledge of.
== First cross river, then insult alligator.
Suggestion to Google on how to comply with these laws: add the ability for trademark owners to disable targetted advertising to their trademark, as the law requires. However, do it by completely removing that trademark from the search index. Anyone searching for that trademark should get a blank page. We'll see how many companies really make use of this feature. If you don't want to play fair, you should take your toys and go home, I say.
were you expecting to see a sig here? perhaps you'd rather see the inside of an ambulance!