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Utah's Third Attempt To Regulate Keywords Fails
Eric Goldman writes "Earlier this month, we discussed HB 450, the Utah Legislature's third attempt to regulate keyword advertising after the past two efforts failed miserably. The latest attempt barely passed the Utah House, aided in part by a 'yes' vote from Representative Jennifer Seelig, who also happens to be a lobbyist-employee of 1-800 Contacts, the principal advocate of HB 450. Nevertheless, HB 450 died in the Utah Senate without a vote when the Utah Legislature adjourned last night. Despite the seeming good news, it would be surprising if the Utah Legislature didn't try a fourth time to regulate keyword advertising in a future session."
I'm sure they'll eventually try something even dumber...like legislating that Pluto is a planet...
Like...here...in Illinois...
DOH!
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
I can't imagine any legislature would even consider this seriously since there is no way for them to enforce this except for those businesses that deal in keywords and have servers in Utah and the company only deals in Utah (i.e. not on the internet). I would think that other than that, the interstate commerce clause of the Constitution applies and they would not be able to regulate it at the state level. Is this the case? I am usually wrong so I would like someone with a better sense of the law to comment on this.
Your signature suggests a bias. Might look into changing that.
I think what bothers a lot of people is that we were told for many years "Oh, no. We have to have free markets. We must deregulate everything!", and then many decided to take an unethical approach to how they go about their business and it turned out that they might not have been trustworthy after all. In the last days of the previous administration, they reversed course into a "worst of both worlds" scenario: Remove all limitations and then fund them to keep them afloat when their machinations didn't pan out. (I don't know where the new administration is going with this, I'm giving them the benefit of the doubt that a huge policy swing towards "No more federal aid" might not make as much sense as a gradual approach towards change.)
But, to answer your question, heavily-regulated markets in Europe didn't keep them from investing outside of their local market. We fucked up, and so the impact doesn't stop at our borders, every foreign investor gets to feel the pinch as well.
I can't imagine any legislature would even consider this seriously since there is no way for them to enforce this except for those businesses that deal in keywords and have servers in Utah and the company only deals in Utah (i.e. not on the internet). I would think that other than that, the interstate commerce clause of the Constitution applies and they would not be able to regulate it at the state level. Is this the case? I am usually wrong so I would like someone with a better sense of the law to comment on this.
This has nothing to do with the law; it has to do with politics.
You grossly over estimate the altruism, intelligence, and motives of politicians. This legislation is designed to get votes. Period. Some cry baby vocal minority out there wants this and the rest of the population, more than likely, doesn't give a shit.
In the meantime, the politicians get the support of the vocal obnoxious cry baby group (volunteer labor and money), which then enables said politicians get to keep their over paid cushy jobs.
Simple.
Actually, the member states of the EU are in widely varying degrees of recession. The UK is totally and utterly screwed, near bankruptcy -- mainly because it was Bush's lapdog for a decade, because its Neues Arbeit Regime looked after itself first, and because they are nothing more than the willing puppets of corporate interests.
Iceland is screwed because it depended on the UK too much. France and Germany are affected, but they do have much more banking regulation and it's nothing like as bad. The other member states are affected less still for the same reasons.
This is why there is so much disagreement at the G20 talks right now -- many EU countries are actually doing ok, despite the recession, and don't want the US and UK imposing desperate Keynsian burn and spend tactics. Since, they don't need them, and would that probably drive them further into depression and instability, just like the US and UK.
The whole of this mess though, does relate to this article. The fundamental problem in today's society is that corporate interests overrule the will of the people. Governments everywhere are bought and sold. I have no idea how we fix this -- corporations are too powerful. However, we really, really, really need to. All of us, in every country.
Maybe it starts with corporate employees from grassroots up. If you work for a corporation, why do you allow all life on Earth to be exploited for your masters bidding? You can change things, you have free will, and a duty to us all. Those of us who don't work in corporations really can't do anything it seems.
Great! First Utah gives us Orrin Hatch and the DMCA and now this? Can the rest of America vote to replace Utah with Puerto Rico?
Right? At least that's what (almost) everybody keeps telling me. "We need government to regulate business because a free market doesn't work, as we discovered with the current recession." Utah's Legislature is just regulating the advertising market as it's "supposed" to do. They are doing their job, so where's the problem?
Nice attempt at a strawman using an absolute blanket statement (typical Repuglican tactic) but you're wrong. The free market usually works most of the time. Sometimes however regulation is an absolute necessity because companies only have one obligation and that is to make a profit.
Making a profit != Best interests of America
Consider the current economic mess the U.S. is in. I'll throw you this bone, it DID start under Clinton when he pressured Fannie/Freddie to loosen lending requirements to let more people borrow. Fannie and Freddie worked for so many years because they DID have such tight lending requirements.
When it became possible for everyone with a pulse to get a mortgage by not using Freddie/Fannie but with unregulated companies taking their place, you have the rise of the CDOs against mortgage backed securities and the problem with these CDOs is that they can be resold and resold countless times without regulation.
Credit Default Swaps written against these is ultimately what brought America into this. SO it's not a partisan issue although you could say with CDOs/CDS being sold for 8 years under Bush why they never looked into it.
It was pure greed. The system worked fine under Fannie/Freddie when the tight requirements (READ: REGULATION) was in place.
Here's another analogy since I can't write it in crayon for you.
Imagine that your neighbor buys his 16 year old son a $30,000 V8 Mustang to celebrate the kid's newly acquired driver's license. Say you think the kid is going to wreck the car, because you know what a reckless brat he is. So you take out an insurance policy for the value of his car. Only you don't take just one. You take 100, maybe 1000. Say everyone else in your neighborhood does the same thing, because there are no insurance regulations that prevent it. Now you have a $30,000 dollar unsecured asset insured for $300,000,000, underwritten by an entity with nowhere near the assets to cover all the bets if the kid wrecks the car. Throw short sellers into the mix, and you have some of the neighbors giving the kid a fifth of Jack Daniels before his Friday night date.
Sometimes regulation is a good thing.
You forgot Eastern Europe. It experienced a bubble similar to the U.S. housing market, with large investments from the west in various homes/companies that are now going bankrupt.
BTW - watch the EU government carefully. During the 30s the U.S. government made a huge power grab, taking-over tasks traditionally controlled by the state governments, so that Washington became the power. I expect the EU government to do the same thing - and you'll endup kowtowing to Brussels as your focus.
>>>Maybe it starts with corporate employees from grassroots up. If you work for a corporation, why do you allow all life on Earth to be exploited for your masters bidding? You can change things, you have free will, and a duty to us all.
>>>
That leads to getting fired. The employee-corporate relationship is a lot like serf-to-landlord. You do what you're told or you get removed, and then you have no way to feed yourself.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall