neverblog.net

The long-awaited, oft-debated approval of the merger between satellite radio providers XM and Sirius has been granted by the FCC’s top brass in a 3-2 vote. This is another piece of good news for both companies, and comes recently after XM announced increased subscription acquisitions and lower acquisition costs. Of course, most analysts were down on Sirius and XM in recent months, predicting that subscriber churn would continue to rise as the economy takes a downturn. That didn’t happen for XM, and it probably won’t happen for Sirius when they announce earnings on July 28th.

In a rare dose of common sense involving nudity on TV, a federal appeals court threw out the fine levied by the FCC against CBS back in 2004 for Janet Jackson’s Super Bowl ‘wardrobe malfunction.’ In addition to criticizing the fine for being excessively large and reactionary, the court noted that fleeting nudity has historically not been punished, making the ruling unprecedented (Jackson’s breast spent nine-sixteenths of a second on the screen). Here’s an excerpt from the CBC article:

A federal appeals court has overturned the record $550,000 fine for indecency against CBS Corp. for Janet Jackson’s “wardrobe malfunction” at the 2004 Super Bowl.

On Monday, a three-judge panel said the Federal Communications Commission “acted arbitrarily and capriciously” in levying the fine.

The Philadelphia-based court also said the FCC had deviated from its previous standard of excluding fleeting images from fines for indecency.

About 90 million viewers saw a naked female breast for nine-sixteenths of a second during the 2004 Super Bowl half-time show.

Source: http://www.cbc.ca/sports/story/2008/07/21/indecency-fine.html

The Motley Fool is reporting that Google is being sued by American Airlines for selling sponsored ads targeted at the keyword ‘American Airlines,’ a trademark of the airline. Here’s an excerpt from the full article, located on Fool.com:

To understand the situation a little better, fire up Google and punch in “American Airlines.” Google’s AdWords program serves up sponsored results along with the organic search-engine results. Online advertising accounts for as much as 99% of Big G’s revenues — it’s clearly a big part of the Google model.

Your mileage may vary, but when I searched this morning for “American Airlines” (in quotes, but it works just as well without them), I saw several third-party ads. The most prominent ad, at the top of the page, is for AMR’s own AA.com website. However, the column on the right features rival airlines and portals that promise discounted airfares.

The ads themselves don’t feature the American Airlines brand. However, the ads wouldn’t be on the page if the sponsors hadn’t bid on the trademarked term. To be sure, I logged into AdWords and saw that I could bid on the term “American Airlines” for as little as $0.04 per click. (Minimum bids vary depending on ad quality, even within the same keywords.)

Is this right? Is this wrong? The only thing for sure is that a lot of money is weighing on the answer.

What will make this one really juicy for the lawyers is that, with most searches on the web being case-insensitive (as far as I can tell–if someone knows differently, please feel free to comment), the trademarked term ‘American Airlines’ and the perfectly reasonable search for ‘american airlines,’ aka airlines offering service in america, are one and the same in a search engine’s mind.

Obviously, the larger issue is whether or not things like ‘Disneyland’ can be bought as a search term when trademarked by a company, but it’s a little more interesting in the case of American, whose decades-old choice of a name designed to build brand recognition might actually confound an already complicated issue even more.

Another interesting point that the article makes is that, if trademarks are ruled off-limits in advertising media like Google, it will also allow the trademark holder to withhold advertising funds from Google for those particular terms, as there would be little reason to advertise for a search term when no competitor could:

It is easy to see that Google could lose a lot of money if it caves in on these cases. If no one else is allowed to bid on “American Airlines” and other AMR trademarks, AMR has no reason to bid on it, either. It is the top organic search-engine result.

Of course, on a more personal level, I will be interested to see how this case is resolved, and what effect, if any, it will have on the blogosphere, many of whom rely heavily on Google AdSenseâ„¢ for their blog’s revenue stream.

adsense, adwords, google, american airlines, american, airlines, lawsuit, trademark, trade mark

The ABA Journal is reporting that 8 inmates in a Florida prison are facing charges of indecent exposure because they were caught masturbating in their cells, alone. Besides the ridiculous notion that someone would be prosecuted for such a thing at all, there is some disturbing evidence that the female deputy who ‘observed’ one of the inmates was really interested in watching the act for the purpose of, errr, describing it later in explicit detail:

Plus, during Alexander’s trial, prosecutor Cynthia Lauriston and the female deputy who complained, after observing him on a monitor as he was alone in his cell, “managed to describe Alexander’s offense in startling detail, eight times, once with Lauriston approximating the action with arm motions,” Grimm notes.

Now, one female deputy’s sexual frustration notwithstanding, I’d like to point out that this heinous denial of our civil liberties is something we should all be proud to protest, at least once a day. Show our nameless female deputy the error of her Puritanical ways and Give freedom a hand!â„¢

There has been quite the buzz recently about Google’s recent move to encourage use of the rel=”nofollow” tag on paid links. Matt Cutts, whose blog offers an insider look at SEO in the Google world, argues that buying links to boost page rank should be prevented, as it constitutes deception of the search engine’s algorithm, and prevents it from serving the most relevant links to searchers.

The Official Google Blog also has an article about the nofollow attribute, which clearly states that incoming links from sites that Google deems have been paid for will not be ‘credited’ towards the target site’s page rank. Now, my point here is not to argue that Google should be allowing comment spam and other obvious and highly exploitable means of link-spamming. However, the fact that Google (and now Yahoo! and MSN Search) have decided to support and enforce the nofollow attribute as the default for paid links means that the three major search engines on the Web, through which most of the people that find information on the Web locate the sites and content they want, have taken the stand that money shouldn’t be able to buy recognition on the Internet, or at least better search results on the Internet.

While this attitude seems quite reasonable, and is garnering a lot of support throughout the blogging community, where spam is an ever-present problem (thank you Akismet, 10,000+ pieces of junk automatically filtered and counting), few seem to be regarding it as the fundamental cultural paradigm shift that it represents. In the ‘real’ world, companies with large amounts of capital can fund massive marketing campaigns, using their clout to eliminate poorer and weaker competitors. It is a simple reality of capitalism that money continues to be used to buy influence in the offline world; in fact, large firms constantly flood the market with print, radio, and TV ads that cost billions per year across the board. Why is it then, that Google and other online search giants have decided that paying to be noticed is deceptive and wrong? Is it a moral stand against a cutthroat practice, or merely another assertion of corporate domination over a particular market by its largest players.

I, for one, will be curious to see how the forces at play in the market affect the decision Google has made on paid links, as sites like ReviewMe and Text-Link-Ads will have to decide whether to conform with Google’s ultimatum, risking the wrath of their advertising clientele, or to leave the nofollow attribute out of their links, thereby risking losing publishers who fear a declining page rank. All in all, I think the decision made by Google to filter search results by non-paid links only is noble, but it ignores the larger reality of our society, which is that money drives people to content all the time.

Take, for example, the recent advent of Gofbot.com, a site operated by McDonald’s as part of a marketing campaign featuring fake newscasts proclaiming Gofbot to be ‘bigger than the Big Mac.’ The point of the campaign, and the fake page counter on Gofbot.com, which always resets to 4 hits, is that nothing is bigger than the Big Mac, a tried and true ‘American classic.’ However, if you look it up, Gofbot has a relatively decent (for a site with NO content) Alexa ranking of 352,306, driven solely by the TV campaign and the buzz it created. The page takes you to McDonald’s website after you’ve seen the mini presentation, and voila! McDonald’s has paid to send you through a link to their site. And they did it by circumventing Google and placing their high-priced advertisement in a market that already accepts that money buys the attention of people in our society.

When you consider that the Web doesn’t live as an entity by itself, and that search engines are but one way that people are driven to websites, it certainly complicates the issue that Google is taking such a clear stand on. I would love to see a world in which advertising dollars don’t make you more relevant for a particular search term, but I’m not sure Google’s moral stand can survive in a world where money already buys the attention of millions of consumers every day.

SEO, google, search, paid links, gofbot.com, mcdonalds, mcdonald’s, msn search, yahoo, advertising, online advertising, nofollow

Yahoo! News is reporting that the city of Berlin, Germany has renamed one of its streets in honor of Frank Zappa. I’m not so sure Zappa would have really liked to have a street named after himself. After all, as the, err, poster-boy for the idea of the un-star, the pop icon who shunned, rather than embraced, the hero worship of a fanbase and the limelight of marketing blitzes. Still, the street is located in a suitably shitty part of Berlin, wedged between factory buildings in the former East German section of town.

Zappa’s brother, Bobby Zappa, said the Grammy-winning rocker, who died in 1993, would have been pleased, in a letter of thanks.

Frank-Zappa-Strasse or Frank Zappa Street — formerly Street 13 — lies on the eastern outskirts of Berlin amid empty industrial buildings in what was communist East Germany.

The street is home to Orwo Haus, a former Communist-era film factory that now provides practice studios for more than 160 bands.

Musicians at Orwo Haus campaigned for two years to have the street’s name changed. Eighteen bands, including the Frank Zappa cover band Sheik Yerbouti, celebrated the renaming this weekend with an all-night concert for more than 2,800 people.

The Orwo Haus association said it wanted Zappa’s name for its street because “he was without taboo, musically versatile, provocative, and didn’t allow himself to be captured by capitalistic enterprises.”

“I am absolutely certain that he would be very proud to have his name as an address for so many musicians,” Bobby Zappa wrote. Source.

In an effort to bolster public support for their proposed merger, satellite radio providers XM and Sirius announced today that they could offer a la carte programming for reduced cost, but only if the merger is approved, and only with newly purchased receivers. I own Sirius stock, as I’ve mentioned before, so I’m a little biased on this, but the idea of truly a la carte channels is pretty cool. Of course, the fact that the two companies are saying they have to merge to provide such a service is, in my opinion, malarkey. The full story, from which the following excerpt was taken, is here:

NEW YORK (Reuters) - U.S. satellite radio providers Sirius (SIRI) and XM (XMSR) said on Monday they can offer consumers a variety of subscription packages that cost up to 46 percent less than current plans if their merger is approved.

In a bid to allay concerns among U.S. lawmakers that their merger would raise prices and limit programming choices, the two companies announced several new packages that they say offer consumers more choice than they can individually.

Under one package, customers can pick 50 channels on either XM Satellite Radio Holdings Inc.’s or Sirius Satellite Radio Inc.’s systems for $6.99 a month. Additional channels can be added for 25 cents each.

Currently, subscribers pay about $13 a month for more than 100 stations on either XM’s or Sirius’ systems.

“We need to build the subscription business base of satellite radio to strengthen our business and better leverage our high fixed costs,” Sirius Chief Executive Mel Karmazin said in a speech in Washington. “We are confident that a lower price point (and) more programming choices will help us do just that.”

Karmazin said he hoped the lower price would spur growth in the nascent satellite radio business as it competes with digital music players, video games and traditional radio for consumers’ attention and funds.

The XM-Sirius deal, which would combine the only two providers of satellite radio service in the United States, is currently being reviewed by both the Federal Communications Commission and antitrust authorities at the Justice Department.

The two companies, which together marked more than $1.7 billion in losses in 2006, said the new “a la carte” packages will work only on satellite radios that have yet to be sold by either company. Other packages will be available on existing satellite radios.

satellite radio, xm, sirius, merger, a la carte, programming

According to Techdirt and an article in the British newspaper The Telegraph, several inmates in an Oklahoma City penitentiary tried to coerce the warden into freeing them by copyrighting their own names, then suing the prison for copyright violation. Apparently, the prisoners thought they had arranged with someone outside the prison to freeze the warden’s assets, thereby allowing them to extort him for their freedom. In reality, the outside contact was an FBI agent, and now the prisoners are facing up to an additional 16 years for their foiled plot.

Regardless of the ridiculous nature of this particular situation, it shows that the idea of manipulating copyright law to extort people has spread far beyond the RIAA and MPAA, to individual enterprising criminals. Unfortunately for the four men in this scenario, they don’t have the clout of either the RIAA or MPAA, and so, rather than meeting with resounding success, their attempt to use copyright law for extortion purposes failed miserably.

copyright law, prisoners, warden, riaa, mpaa, copyright

My fiancee was a vet tech at a shelter for a while, and the local Animal Control Officer was hospitalized one day for being attacked by what the ACO said were three pit bulls. When my fiancee got there to get the animals from the owner, they were golden retrievers. Ignorance runs deep, even to the people who are supposed to know these things as part of their jobs… The good news here is that it quickly made digg’s most popular, so it should be seen by quite a few people.

read more | digg story

Slashdot is reporting that New Hampshire has joined several other states in rejecting the proposed national ‘Real ID.’ The beauty of the law making use of the Real ID illegal in the ‘Live free or die’ state wasn’t that it passed 24-0, it was that it called the ID itself ‘contrary and repugnant’ to both the NH and US Constitutions. New Hampshire’s politicians have never been ones to gloss over or euphemize what they recognize as crap from the start, and this law is no exception. Also amusing is the fact that the state rejected what it called a $3 million ‘bribe’ from the Feds to accept and implement the Real ID.

Does anybody find it ironic that the supposed ’state’s-rights’ party took it upon themselves to nationalize the ID system, only to be stopped by states deciding to assert their rights?

new hampshire, nh, real id, constitution