Utah Bans Keyword Advertising 271
Eric Goldman writes "Last month, Utah passed a law banning keyword advertising. Rep. Dan Eastman, the Utah legislator who sponsored the law, believes competitive keyword advertising is the equivalent of corporate identity theft, causing searchers to be (in his words) 'carjacked' and 'shanghaied' by advertisers. He also takes a swipe at the EFF, dismissing its critique of the law as 'criticism from the fringes.'"
Damn Straight! (Score:5, Insightful)
Stupid advertisers.
Seriously, wtf is wrong with this picture?
Great... (Score:5, Insightful)
The only real effect it will have is making things harder for advertising companies, by forcing them to filter out the dolts in Utah before serving up an ad.
This is nothing more than some 2-bit politician trying to make a name for himself, and won't do any good whatsoever for any of the citizens that were responsible for putting his sorry ass in office in the first place.
Re:Damn Straight! (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Great... (Score:4, Insightful)
Thanks! (Score:4, Insightful)
My two explanations (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Damn Straight! (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:My two explanations (Score:5, Insightful)
No, they won't have to filter (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Damn Straight! (Score:4, Insightful)
--
Slashdot needs a "-1, Wrong" moderation option.
Interstate commerce (Score:3, Insightful)
bullshit (Score:4, Insightful)
Advertising a competing product when potential customers search for a trademark is exactly what trademarks were supposed to accomplish.
Re:Damn Straight! (Score:5, Insightful)
Because illiterate tools are what /. is all about: (Score:4, Insightful)
This is a law which hopes to prevent businesses, especially those who made a useful tool to aggregate left over attention, from telling interested people about competing offers and businesses. This law is quitiscentially unAmerican in the sense that it's opposed to the free exchange of ideas, and to obtaining a competative advantage. It's positively feudal, and anyone who for a moment entertains a notion of legitimacy of such a law should be shot with a musket. Think of what the people get, the for the low low price of momentary curiosity which they may or may not act on a free useful tool, rather a variety of them, and a snap-shot of competing offers. The public domain of ideas belongs, wait for it you malignant asshat, the PUBLIC. Considering the fantastic deal the public is getting, via free sweet tools, ceeding yet another area of the public market place of ideas to dipshits that appearently give money to Mormon whores (the bad kind), those dipshits owe us all one motherfucking assload of everlasting awesome. A cure for cancer, cheap fusion power, something really magnificent for a new dominion over what we already collectively own: The knowledge that Plumber Bob is a plumber, and Dan's Plumbing offers the same services, maybe better, and maybe at better prices.
Ignorance is not a virtue, and the idea that a privaleged few should be able to force it on the larger world is truly insane.
No, you miss the point (Score:5, Insightful)
The issue the Utah legislators are against is (the following example is fictitious) Sony buying keyword advertisements for the "XBOX" keyword - in hopes of getting them to buy PS3s instead. The idea behind the law is that, in this example, Microsoft own the XBOX trademark, and by Sony buying ads for "XBOX", they are 'benefiting from another person's trademark'. Or something like that. To be more specific, it might be the case the Sony pay more, and people typing "XBOX" see ads for Sony, and not Microsoft. The legislators see that as "hijacking a trademark".
Now, this is an interesting issue. In essence, this is a case of one entity making use of anothers' trademark for profit. Which does seem a little 'off', at least if you value trademarks (I do, and I disvalue copyright and patents, at least in their current incarnation in the US). However, as pointed out in the past, the real issue isn't what is 'fair', but what is possible. Implementing this law is a lesson in futility. In other words, Utah don't get it. But they are not the complete morons implied by most people's reaction to the Slashdot title for this story.
Re:My two explanations (Score:1, Insightful)
2. This law, from what I've gathered, isn't saying that if you google "Jiffy Lube" then no competitors can come up in the search results, it's just saying they can't come up in the keyword ads. So your associative lookup is all good.
3. Old fashioned thinking also says that a trademark is something that one company can own. I know IP is not so highly regarded here on /. but it is something respected in the real world. A company should be able to protect it's trademarked name in advertising.
Re:bullshit (Score:5, Insightful)
How the heck did this get modded informative? Trademarks were established so that the time and effort a company spends establishing its brand won't get hijacked by someone offering a substandard product with the same name. How useful would it be if you went to the store to get "Aspirin", and there were 10 different versions with the same name, but half of them were weaker and less effective products? Yes, you can always read the ingredients but look at a can of generic corn vs., say, Del Monte. I've found through experience that the Del Monte version is always crisper and sweeter (meaning it was probably canned more quickly from fresher corn) than the generic version. However, both labels will read "corn, water, salt". If the generic maker was able to copy Del Monte's tradename, buying canned corn would be a crapshoot.
Now, you may say "canned corn, big deal", but what if the "Michelin" tires you paid for were actually retreads or substandard tires? Not only do you get ripped off by paying the premium price, but I don't really want to risk a blowout at 60 mph.
There is a ton of marketing research - from both ad firms and university professors - that shows that brand names are useful to consumers. The brand provides information and assurance about a certain level of consistency and quality to the consumer. For example, having tried Hunt's, Aylmer, and generic ketchup, I'll stick to Heinz. I have tried some generic products (e.g. hot dogs - for some reason I have food on the brain tonight!) that I find perfectly acceptable to their brand name versions. Here's another - I take a generic version of metformin to help control my diabetes; it's less than half the price of the brand name version, and it works perfectly well. But I've also tried many generic products (rough toilet paper, inferior laundry detergent, lousy frozen food to name a few) that were completely disappointing.
But those are inexpensive products where the cost of testing them is a few bucks. When I upgrade to an HDTV, it's going to be a Toshiba or Sony or Samsung or LG; it's not going to be an Avanti. When I spend $2,000, I want the assurance of a brand name (quality, warranty, likelihood the maker will be around in five years).
That's what brand names are supposed to accomplish, not to make it easier for competitors. Sheesh!
Re:bullshit (Score:4, Insightful)
Of course that doesn't mean that advertising competing products when people search for trademarked names should be illegal (in fact, the very idea that it should be is so whacky that I'm not surprised that this is from Utah of all places), but I don't think being able to advertise competing products is the *purpose* of trademarks or the reason why they were created.
Re:Utah again. (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:My two explanations (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Damn Straight! (Score:5, Insightful)
Thank you for the links, those were an interesting read.
I still think that these legislation is not wise.
First, I do not think it is the job of the state to protect the success or effectiveness of a private entity's pr-campaign.
Second, this type of legislation would put a burden on the sellers of advertisement space. Would they have to verify the legal owner of each possible trademark that a keyword could refer to?
The link uses the example 'pontiac', and how it should point to General Motors website. What about 'pontac', 'pontiac dealership' or 'pontiac repairs'? It quickly becomes very difficult to draw the line on where the rights of a trademark owner end, and free competition for eyeballs begins.
Some types of keyword ads should be stopped (Score:5, Insightful)
But the greatest scum of all keyword adverts is in the vein of 'gator' et al, that rewrote webpages and literally embedded ads for competitors right within a businesses own website's content - a least from the end user experience perspective.
The new 'gator' is that 'intellitext' crap, and frankly its just as bad, perhaps worse because its coming from the website instead of being the result of malware I can remove. (Sure I can generally block intellitext crap with FF using adblock with some effort, but that's beside the point.)
I hate playing 'dodge the link with my mouse' with 'legitimate' website content, blogs, and so forth. I would support a law that banned that sort of page rewriting to embed advertising links.
I've never met a user that found those ads anything but annoying. (Especially on older systems where running the javascript and building the popup would take several seconds, like my old G3 ibook, a delay triggered by simply letting the mouse glide over a link by mistake... not click on it, just drift over it)
Re:Damn Straight! (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Some types of keyword ads should be stopped (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Because illiterate tools are what /. is all abo (Score:5, Insightful)
Returning Bob's Hardware in a search for 'Dan's Hardware' based off from the word 'hardware' might be ok. 'hardware' is a rather generic word, after all. Walmart buying a link based off of 'Target', 'Sears', or 'K-Mart' would not be.
Still, I could easily see this law being struck down by a judge with a wide interpretation of the 1st, as long as no actual misrepresentation is made.
Re:Damn Straight! (Score:4, Insightful)
How are they going to do that exactly? Bribe Google programmers to always return 'walmart' in a search for your store?
All google does is put a well marked advertising link at the top or right of the search. Your store will still be returned as normal by google.
If you don't like it, pay google for advertising.
What about comparison ads? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Thanks! (Score:2, Insightful)
How can you expect reasonable people to accept your opinion on anything when you spew such uninformed, bigoted nonsense. Apparently, you know absolutely nothing about Mormon attitudes on health care, but yet you feel the need to comment on it. I can hear the snickers of thousands and thousands of Mormon doctors, nurses, and other medical professionals. That comment is right up there with other gems such as "Mormons have horns" and "Mormons aren't allowed to dance." Come visit LDS Hospital, the University of Utah Medical Center, or the Huntsman Cancer Institute sometime. You'll see lots of Mormon doctors and patients. If you are referring to a certain high profile incident in the news a few years ago, just remember that the doctors on the other side of the argument were most likely Mormons (as a high percentage of doctors in Utah are Mormons).
Re:Great... (Score:2, Insightful)
IIRC, Utah cannot regulate an out of state company nor intrastate commerce, so this law would apply to Utah based companies only.
Re:Thanks! (Score:5, Insightful)
They do have horns though, right?
On a more serious note, is this even enforceable? I mean my server is not in Utah... That or is Google going to simply de-list Utah and its businesses?
-nB
Re:No, you miss the point (Score:3, Insightful)
Actually, I think the example given in the article about Google already doing this outside of the US and Canada is a pretty good demonstration that this is, in fact, possible:
If you haven't read the article, I'd recommend it. This is one of those rare cases when an article is actually well thought-out and well written.
Re:Damn Straight! (Score:4, Insightful)
Unless you click the "I'm Feeling Lucky" button, you don't get "sent" anywhere when you do a Google search. If an ad happens to be displayed on the page for www.DonkeyShow.com, and you don't think it's relevant... DON'T CLICK ON IT!
How's that for easy to understand? Suggesting that putting that ad there is somehow stealing from Metal Gear or infringing their rights is absurd.
Re:Damn Straight! (Score:4, Insightful)
That's ridiculous and shows a complete misunderstanding of the situation. We're talking about keyword ads, not search results. If you Google for Red Hat you'll still find www.redhat.com, www.fedora.org, blah, etc. in the top search results, regardless of what ads Microsoft buys.
Besides which, I don't think Google makes it possible for one company to buy every position in the "ads" area to the right of the screen. I've certainly never seen the same company's ad repeated twice in that section. So presumably if MS did buy a keyword ad, their ad would just appear *alongside* anybody else's ads for that keyword... including Red Hat, Inc. if they chose to buy one.
How to comply (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Damn Straight! (Score:3, Insightful)