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Google Expected to Settle Over Drug Ads, to the Tune of $500M
Animats writes "The Wall Street Journal reports that 'Google Inc. is close to settling a US criminal investigation into allegations it made hundreds of millions of dollars by accepting ads from online pharmacies that break US laws.' Google's acceptance of ads from unlicensed 'online pharmacies' is considered profiting from illegal activity. The Washington Post reports 'the inquiry could draw more attention to how vulnerable Google's automated system has been to the machinations of shady operators.'"
The expected settlement's magnitude was hinted at in a recent SEC filing, which disclosed that Google has set aside a half-billion dollar fund on which to draw in this case.
Looks like this is about Google refusing to stop advertising sites in Canada selling prescription meds to people without a prescription. In other words, this is about Big Pharma vs. YOU.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
What's the big deal with 500M when GOOG made billions out of these ads. Unless there is more severe punishment to the individuals who run these businesses, this wont stop.
In the last week I've seen ads for "xforex.com" which are basically foreign exchange scams promising a 500% ROI.
I've definitely seen ads for 'online pharmacies', and possibly even for 'replica watches' ... I don't think Google cares about who they sell ads to, as long as they sell them.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
Ayup. Just one more example of how corporations as people is a failed idea from the start. If an individual did this that person would be locked up in the pokey for a few years where their earning potential would be substantially more reduced.
Perhaps if we reformed the law so that coporations who so overtly break laws would be punished by, say, having to turn over ALL their profits for the next X months to the government as penalty - I bet far mroe corporations would reconsider such nose-thumbing.
Hold the phone, here- Summary link to the Washington Post article says that it's Google's automated system, here. Google didn't look at these ads, say "Yup, that's a phony pharmacy ad", and then get rid of them- they were submitted automatically.
You'd think there'd be a DMCA-type thing where if a complaint was submitted about an ad it could be taken down. Bet there might be now.
Sent from my CR-48
I can understand making a settlement with some witness, so that you can progress investigation. In this case, however, this a case where settlement actually shutdown the investigation altogether. That is not normal, that just mean that if you have enough money, you have more chance than a random dude to avoid justice. Clearly not fair.
There are also settlement because the accused cannot afford to go to justice. (BTW, that is a big failure of a justice system that you cannot defend yourself if the accusation has enough money like any big corp vs John Doe) - but well, Google has billions in his coffer and probably plenty of 1000$/hour lawyer working for it full time. So what is the point of even giving them the option to settle ?
It still amounts to the same thing, in the same way that eBay are ostensibly against the selling of counterfeit goods but still profit from said sales. If Google had wanted to put systems in place to try and prevent illegal ads, they could have done... for a cost - and there's the rub. What company is going to nuke one of its revenue streams at personal cost if there is a belief that they can get away with it (or that any punishment will be less than the cost of the fix)? Companies are pretty much bound to bend the law to its extremes in pursuit of profit, the entire way they are set up encourages it (i.e. beyond a certain size almost consequence free actions) and requires a massive rethink. Of course, that won't happen because there's too much money at stake and politicians are ten-a-penny.
Why do ads from all over the world have to now be approved by the usa??
Why is the ad firm in trouble, for what a person buys from another company?
Is Google supposed to now police what licenses each company has placing ads?
Then do each ad must get approved by some usa firm or government, for an ad from another country?
Why is the buyer not responsible for what they buy?
Or the company selling the items?
Or is this the blame game, where they must blame someone or some company reachable, and extract money from them?
They still prohibit ads for legal products that they don't like:
http://adwords.google.com/support/aw/bin/static.py?hl=en&topic=28436&guide=28435&page=guide.cs&answer=176077
"Google AdWords prohibits the promotion of certain weapons such as firearms, firearm components, ammunition, balisongs (switchblades), butterfly knives, and brass knuckles. This policy applies to the content of your ad and your website.
(Emphasis added.)
Now show me where an automated system has either a 100% detection rate or a 0% false alarm rate.
And, given google has been sued several times for "abuse of monopoly" by refusing to put someone's ads on the front page (never mind on any page reachable), what are they supposed to do? Take it up the jacksie from everyone?
They let Merck off from the full punishment when one of its business units was caught systematically defrauding Medicare because the full punishment, complete blacklisting from Medicare, would have risked bankrupting Merck. This is also the same government that prosecutes some Islamic schmuck who thinks he's giving money to aid Palestinians who are going without (but the "charity" is really a Hamas front), but then gives the "Palestinian Authority" hundreds of millions in funds (much of which is to arm itself) despite the fact that most of the PA's factions are regarded as terrorist groups by the federal government.
Google owns Youtube. Google stands to make lots of money by putting ads on videos of TV shows and movies. However, Youtube has software in place to detect and remove copyrighted material from videos. It's not perfect, not by a long shot, but it's there. I'm guessing that if that sort of thing wasn't up before, it is now, or will be in the coming months.
Looking at it, Google is at fault to some degree- but saying that Google knew these ads were up and allowed them is just silly, because if they had done that, they would have had to know someone would find out and blast them for it, like this.
Sent from my CR-48
On the one hand, if the feds have internal emails or similar to the effect of "Sales minion: 'Hey boss, the new clients are clearly illegal scammers.' Sales Manager: 'Minion, illegal scammers pay good money for ads. You didn't see them. Also, unless I 'don't see' at least 30% more by the end of the fiscal year your ass is out the door..." then there is a good argument to be made that Google ought to be on the hook.
There are two aspects that worry me, though: Presumably, as with many high-volume electronic services, most of the bulk Adwords sales receive basically no human scrutiny, and would probably have transaction costs too high to be workable if they did. Many online services are like that, many retail services are like that, cheap cellphones, etc, etc. Creating an implied duty to vet all customers for virtually anything that might have criminal use, on pain of major lawsuits/fines should some of the customers turn out to be criminals, seems wildly dangerous. Even the largely draconian DMCA specifically avoided doing that.
Second, of course, is the concern about making the internet either a highly fragmented geolocated-to-death zone, or an "all entities bound by the union of all sets of laws" one. In this case, for instance, a nontrivial percentage of the US lies pretty close to the Canadian border. It is hardly implausible that canadian businesses might wish to advertise to american audiences certain goods and services that are only legal if they cross the border, nor is doing so obviously criminal(in a similar vein, there isn't anything illegal about running ads for Vegas vacations in states that ban gambling, or prostitution ads in Vegas, despite the fact that you have to leave the county to legally purchase the services offered.)
Obviously, a nontrivial percentage of discount canadian pharmacies do offer to assist in breaking US law, by mailing you some drugs, often with minimal documentation, and a nontrivial percentage of ads for gambling are for illegal online betting, rather than for visits to establishments in different jurisdictions; but it isn't as though a simple keyword search is necessarily going to distinguish between the two, and a crackdown on something with legitimate applications always has potential to go to unfortunate places...
Why do ads from all over the world have to now be approved by the usa??
The USA has a hard time understanding that there are other places in the World with their own sets of rules! It's a similar issue with online gambling - If there's a non-USA gambling website how can it be the website's problem if some bozo in the US-of-A visits the website and gambles! It's illegal for the gambler in the USA to gamble online, it is NOT illegal to offer online gambling! So it shouldn't be up to the website to prevent them (assuming it's not illegal where the website is hosted).
Eclectic beats from Leeds, UK
handmadehands.co.uk
Weapons aren't legal in most of the civilized world... Illegal possession of firearms gets you at least a year behind bars in my country... An illegal knife (>= 2.7 Inches) gets you a week, and that's the minimum punishment...
Do other search engines do the same thing? Or similar things? Why is google being singled out for doing something that other search engines were doing before google existed?
If I get email for a bogus product, is the email carrier responsible? If I use paper to print out ads for a bogus product, is the paper manufacturer responsible?
Google should match every dollar in the settlement with a dollar towards getting these anti-competitive laws repealed.
Scratch that, that just rewards the incumbent scumbags. Google should put the money into backing pro-freedom candidates. Though given Google's political leanings, that's not going to happen.
Do you know what the fuck Google Ads even is?
Multiple scratchcards in my magazine are for other magazines. They are quite clearly advertisements.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
Curious when eBay is going to be requested to cough up profits from all the sales of counterfeit products over the years.
I thought "profiting from illegal activity" was part of the 21st century business model. You don't do something illegal, but you allow people doing something illegal pay you for your service. Lawyers have been collecting fees from organized crime for years, but our judicial system allows that to some extent. Other things, not so much, but rarely prosecuted.
If I used a sig over again, would anyone notice?
If this is illegal why the hell isn't it illegal for pharmaceuticals to advertise drugs that 95% of the American public don't need? It's not like someone is ever going to see a commercial for one of the countless stupidly named drugs out there and demand them from their doctor. It's insane.
Overuse of antibiotics leads to less effective antibiotics. So the effectiveness is a common resource which is not yours alone to squander.
Human use of antibiotics is a drop in the bucket compared to low-dose use of the same drugs in animals to decrease bacterial load. The latter is apparently a far more significant factor in the evolution of drug resistant bacterial strains.
As to "common resource", drugs are INVENTED. I'd love to view a competent libertarian analysis - and criticism of it - on whether treating a drug design as the private property of the inventor might lead to conservative treatment and delay of bacterial resistance development, whether this might end up with a net increase in medical benefits to the general population (due to more disease being cured) or decrease (from treatments not done due to overly conservative use or high price), whether patent expiration leads to overuse to maximise profit before the monopoly goes away, and how other government interventions would affect the cures/resistance tradeoff.
Anything else though should be fair game.
We're agreed there.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
They still prohibit ads for legal products that they don't like: [Google policy banning adds whose text or web site promotes weapons.]
They're a private company. They get to prohibit ads for anything they want to (provided they don't illegally discriminate between different sellers of similar products).
Don't like it? Use another search engine.
(I don't like their prohibition on weapons ads . But freedom means letting other people do things you don't like.)
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Curious when eBay is going to be requested to cough up profits from all the sales of counterfeit products over the years.
Ditto radio stations: I've heard so many viagra (and variants) and "make money at home" ads on radio lately that it's starting to sound like an email inbox with no spam filter.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Owning them is legal, but selling or even giving them away is restricted in many states, and that is what they ads are for; selling them.
Interstate commerce of Switchbades and butterfly knifes is banned by the Federal SWITCHBLADE Act. Brass Knuckles of any material are not legal and therefore cannot be sold to people in the states of: MA,CA,NY,MI,RI and IL. Metallic Knuckles may not be sold to FL. And gun laws are even more varied and confusing.
I think this should all be legal, but it's not Google's fault that it isn't, and I think it is perfectly reasonable for them to not want to wade the mishmash of state laws that govern them.
> The federal investigation has examined whether Google knowingly accepted ads from online pharmacies, based in Canada and elsewhere, that violated U.S. laws, according to the people familiar with the matter ..
What specific laws are they violating and who is lobbying on Capitol that Google keeps geting into litigation with the US gov?
The federal investigation has examined whether Google knowingly accepted ads from online pharmacies, based in Canada and elsewhere, that violated U.S. laws, according to the people familiar with the matter.
Google's system, if I understand it correctly, is largely automated. To what degree should Google (or any other site like Craigslist) be expected to make an extra effort to police certain advertisers for compliance with local laws? Law enforcement needs to put the donuts down and do their jobs.
Have gnu, will travel.
So if an illegal online pharmacy wants to buy a billboard ad on route I-95, does the advertising company verify that the pharmacy is breaking no US laws before allowing the ad? If they do not, are they liable because they profited? How about newspapers? Is every advertisement in the classifieds section operating 100% within the law?
Where is the line drawn here?
Can someone go after the ad network that shows the blatantly false "I made $77 an hour doing nothing!" and "Get an iPad for $44!"? These things show up all over the place -- CNN, NBA/NFL, Facebook -- and they are clearly scams, yet nobody seems to notice or do anything about them.
--Jeremy
Jesus was a liberal
Just like knowledgeable laymen with meth "habits" have fixed American industry's productivity problems.