Marketing Pilgrim

Google must be getting paranoid by now. I bet Larry Page can’t fart without getting a letter from Congress these days.

The latest Congressional attention of course comes from the latest privacy scandal to hit the Internet. Oh, I’m sorry, I must have channeled my inner sensationalistic blogger for that last line. The only thing that has really happened, at least as Google says it of course, is the consolidation of privacy policies. That idea was enough to get members of Congress to get their hands out of lobbyists pockets and realize that the cameras might be rolling in an election year so they jumped to attention and called Google to protect your interests (wink, wink, nod, nod).

Google responded on their Public Policy Blog

Ok, it may be that I took a liberty or two with the headline. However, when you read what the EU (European Union) is “allowing” itself to do if a company violates their first update to their data protection laws in 17 years and then look at the state of THEIR union its not a very far jump to get to my conclusion.

From Bloomberg

Companies face fines as high as 2 percent of yearly global sales for losing personal data under an overhaul of European Union privacy rules.

Data protection agencies in the EU’s 27 countries would gain the power to sanction companies that violate requirements for handling personal information proposed by the European Commission today. The measures, which also target online- advertising and social networking sites, update the EU’s 17- year-old data protection policies.

Wikipedia and several other sites including Reddit and Boing-Boing will go dark on Wednesday as a form of protest. What they’re protesting is the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA).

Critics of the act say that it supports wholesale censorship with no recourse for even accidental offenders. At the root is the concept that the government can block any website that carries pirated materials. Obviously, this would be a big problem for eBay, YouTube, Facebook, pretty much any website that allows users to upload content.

A lawsuit against Facebook regarding their use of likenesses and more for advertising purposes is being allowed to continue despite Facebook’s attempts to stop it.

According to Bloomberg

Facebook Inc., the world’s most used social-networking service, can be sued by people who claim showing advertisements that their friends apparently like violates a California law regarding commercial endorsements.

U.S. District Judge Lucy Koh in San Jose rejected Facebook’s bid to dismiss the lawsuit on Dec. 16, ruling the plaintiffs may pursue claims that the company’s sponsored ads violate state law and are fraudulent. Koh granted Facebook’s request to dismiss a claim that it unjustly enriched itself with the sponsored ads.

FTC Chairman Jon Leibowitz spoke up for self-regulation of targeted advertising during a presentation at ad:tech New York on Tuesday.

He stated that consumers must be given a choice as to how much of their personal data is tracked, but it’s up to the ad industry, not the government, to make it so.

“We at the FTC have no interest in shutting down the Internet party,” he said. “Our only concern is that, if guests understand there could be a cover charge to the party [in the form of giving up some privacy], they should be able to make meaningful choices about how much they’ll pay.”

This comes just as the Digital Advertising Alliance released an up-dated set of principles regarding online data collection.

The Canadian Supreme Court has decided that publishers who link to libelous material cannot be found liable themselves for the spread of that material. It’s a rare legal protection for online publishers who are often treading on very unstable ground when it comes to this area.

paidContent reports

Hyperlinking is fundamental to how information spreads on the web—it’s the reason why traffic spikes on some sites and also explains why false information can funnel outward so quickly. One question that publishers and lawyers have long wrestled with is whether sites are legally liable for the accuracy of material they link out to. In a major ruling today, a court offered an answer to that.

Tweety bird should have seen this one coming. According to the Wall Street Journal, Twitter is about to gain possession of the word “Tweet” and birds all over the world are angry .

Twitter has been trying to trademark the word for a while now but has consistently been blocked by the US Patent and Trademark Office because two other companies had already applied for variations of the term.

Back in September, Twitter filed a lawsuit against Twittad, a company that arranges for people to get paid to Tweet. But instead of a long drawn out battle, it turned into a short fight. Yesterday, the Wall Street Journal reported that the two companies have come to an agreement. Twitter will withdraw their lawsuit and Twittad will give them the trademark on the word “Tweet.”