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Utah Trying To Restrict Keyword Advertising ... Again
Eric Goldman writes "The Utah legislature has tried to restrict keyword advertising twice before, with disastrous results. In 2004, Utah tried to ban keyword advertising in adware; that law was declared unconstitutional. In 2007, Utah tried to regulate competitive keyword advertising; after a firestorm of protests, Utah repealed the law in 2008. Despite this track record, Utah is trying to regulate keyword advertising a third time. HB 450 would allow trademark owners to block competitors from displaying certain types of keyword ads. In practice, this law is just another attempt by the Utah legislature to enact a law that doesn't help consumers at all but does help trademark owners suppress their online competition."
Please remove the "Mormons" tag. Not all Mormons think that way. San Francisco has liberal Mormons, Texas has conservative Mormons, and there are libertarians dispersed throughout.
In tiny print, at the bottom of each page: "Please do not use this site where prohibited."
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
We have a lobbyist problem at the local level not unlike at the national level. The amount of gifts that get handed out is stunning and much of it goes unreported. My thoughts are that this happenned in Utah is because whoever is pushing this knows that they have a better chance of getting away with it here than someplace like California.
First off, I note that the "mormon" tag on the article. If there were a quote from a black leader, I wonder, would you tag the article as "black"?
I would not be so quick to bury this guy in your haste to have weaker trademarks. There is an interesting question, buried in this article. It is, what does a trademark actually buy? A trademark is a sort of a definition of an invented word, administered today by the government. A search word is as also a definition of a word, administered by a private corporation and sold to the highest bidder.
When Linux trademarks "Linux", it is to say that he has the rights to the definition of this word in some way as it pertains to his product. But, if I buy Linux on Google, then, I get the right to define the word by having my definition be placed in a preferred position.
Thus, you almost have to view trademark as a contest between the federal first come first serve word ownership mechanism, and, a private enterprise word as an auction mechanism advanced by the likes of Google.
There is a real dividing line between corporation and state, and the irony here is that those who would argue that trademarks should be less powerful by definition argue that words should be auctioned, rather than licensed, and conversely, those who argue for strong government trademarks ultimately argue that the government should control more the meaning of words rather than the free market.
I would be willing to bet that leftists who casually seek to undermine business by eliminating trademarks might be well advised to rethink that position, as they should so many others. I can't imagine that they of all people would really want a world where the definitions of words are decided by the highest bidder. It runs the risk of undermining everything that they stand for, and for that reason I'd have to conclude that people rushing to digitally behead "the mormon" might well consider that the "the mormon" is doing them a favor.
This is my sig.
The way these items get passed is with continually trying the bill again. I have seen unpopular laws passed at the local level that were thrown out repeatedly until eventually the right opposers were either not present or just plain old tired of fighting it. I believe the term is patient gradualism. Just keep trying to get a law passed, until eventually new lawmakers are present or the opposition is not present at the time.
Stay tuned for new sig...
Nonsense; more than one advertiser can buy "Toyota" as a keyword, while there is only one Toyota.com. There's nothing wrong with presenting alternatives when someone is looking for something; search is not an exact science anyhow, and many results end up being something other than what you're looking for. A Chevy dealer could buy the keyword and run an ad promoting the Malibu as an alternative to the Camry or such.
Ceci n'est pas un post.
Restricting the use of language doesn't work.
Actually it has and it historically does. That's why people do it. But this debate isn't really about restricting language, it's, deciding, who gets to own the definitions of words, the government, or the private sector.
This is my sig.
Hi. I'm from Utah.
It seems your stereotype-writer needs some calibration.
The University of Utah was one of the original 4 nodes on the ArpaNet. A Utah'n invented the TV. Utah is home to Novell. The Mormon church has an army of Java programmers. The Utah Education Network got IP connectivity to more of its schools, faster than any other state west of the Mississippi.
Would you like to tell me how I am out of touch with reality? I'm not Mormon, but maybe you think Mormons just don't get out much so they don't know what's going on. Except Mormons go on their "missions", creating the most well-travelled and bi-lingual state population in the nation.
They're not exactly known for their progressive views on technology.
The same might be said of girls...but that would be just plain ignorant, right?
I guess I'd better flee the country then, because hell if I want american culture validated by anything I do. O_
It doesn't matter if you flee, because you are a product of American culture.
a set of circumstances that operates completely and totally independent of "culture" and has more to do with the local environment they were raised in
Well, uh, the local environment is usually what culture is really all about... culture is the rules that are permissible behind closed doors as much as open ones.
But of course, people have been using coincidence to validate their crackpot theories (religious significance in particular) since the dawn of time
But the thing is, historically speaking, being a religious fanatic and having a conservative appreciation of culture matters. You can bash tradition and culture as much as you want, but they work. And, in fact, even though you might be anti-culture, even most anti-religious people and leaders of the far left will concede that theirs is not a project to rid the world of christian culture as it is to replace it with a culture of their own. Culture is just something that you can't escape. Even if you are in the "I'm not in any culture", crowd, you are still in the "I'm not in any culture culture".
This is my sig.