Posts tagged legal representatives
The FTC may not be fining bloggers yet, but it’s got an eye on them
Apr 29th
Earlier this year, Ann Taylor held a preview event for its new clothing line. The company invited bloggers and promised them gift cards valued between $10 and $500, after sending the retailer the posts they were planning to publish. The effort came in direct violation of the FTC’s new disclosure rules.
In February, I wrote that Ann Taylor might be getting a visit from the FTC. Well, now they’ve come and gone. According to a letter from Mary Engle, the FTC’s associate director of advertising
practices, to Ann Taylor’s legal representatives:
“We were
concerned that bloggers who attended a preview on January 26, 2010
failed to disclose that they received gifts for posting blog content
about that event.”
Apparently, the FTC thinks that it is Ann Taylor’s responsibility to make sure that each and every blogger disclosed the gift cards. However, the organization will not be fining Ann Taylor. According to AdAge:
“The FTC said it decided not to take action against Ann Taylor, because,
according to the company, the January preview was the first and, to
date, only such event. Also, only a small number of bloggers posted
content about the preview and several of those disclosed the gifts. A
sign posted at the event directed bloggers to disclose the gifts,
though the FTC says it’s not clear how many bloggers saw the sign.”
The FTC’s new guidlines state that bloggers and brands that fail to disclose sponsorships could be fined up to $11,000. And the main thing that appears to have kept Ann Taylor in the clear was the company’s ability to cooperate with the investigation:
“LOFT
adopted a written policy . . . stating that LOFT will not issue
any gift to any blogger without first telling the blogger that the
blogger must disclose the gift in his or her blog.”
This is especially interesting in light of comments that FTC officials made earlier this year.
In January, Len Gordon, the FTC’s Northeast director, said that bloggers over reacted to the new rules, and that violations would be considered according to their severity:
“It’s one thing if it’s a packet of soap, another if it’s an automobile. It’s going to depend on the particulars.”
But nowhere here does it look like the actual payment in question was significant. And yet, Ann Taylor avoided paying fines because it promised not to do it again. Chances are, we’ll be seeing some fines being handed out soon for similar violations.
Hundreds of top-level domains? One big headache for businesses
Jan 23rd
The plan has sparked controversy for an obvious reason: the introduction of hundreds of new TLDs would be a nightmare for businesses.
Right now, businesses have to protect their trademarks across a handful of TLDs (.com, .net, etc.) and, in many cases, country-code domains (.co.uk, .es, etc.). But if ICANN opens the floodgates to new TLDs, businesses will find themselves having to defend their trademarks from cybersquatters across a potentially unlimited hodgepodge of them (think everything from .football to .cooking).
For this reason, major corporations and their legal representatives have been fighting to ensure that if ICANN proceeds, it makes sure that the new TLDs are implemented in such a way that respects their intellectual property rights. And that doesn’t require these corporations to shell out big bucks buying thousands of new domain names. Unfortunately, any measures ICANN takes to protect big corporations aren’t likely to benefit smaller businesses. They will have to decide whether or not it’s worth trying to defend their names.
For businesses in general, it’s unlikely that the new TLDs will solve the “there aren’t any more good domains available” problem. Sure, if you sell chairs, for instance, chairs.com is already taken. But being able to register chairs.discount or even cheap.chairs isn’t likely to be much of a consolation. .com will likely always be king because it’s top of mind with consumers. And even though Google’s Matt Cutts has previously stated that Google doesn’t give .com more weight, the fact that .com is enthroned means that top SERPs for popular keywords are almost always filled with websites residing at .com.
For consumers, hundreds of new TLDs will probably go unnoticed for the most part. I can hardly remember the last website I visited that sported a .biz or .info TLD. But new TLDs could help scammers take advantage of consumers. Some, for instance, might be tricked by a phishing website at, hypothetically, www.hsbc.savings. That in turn creates yet another headache for businesses: dealing with the possibility that new TLDs will be used to con their customers.
At the end of the day, the only party that will really benefit from hundreds of new TLDs is ICANN, which will rake in millions of dollars from companies and organizations wanting to run their own TLDs. Right now, some say there are already hundreds of likely bidders for new TLDs.
Unfortunately, in this case, what’s good for ICANN is not good for the internet.
Photo credit: rangesoss via Flickr.
Social media turns toxic avenger for The Guardian (#trafigura)
Jan 23rd
‘Trafigura’ – the name that The Guardian dare not say, despite previous reportage – is now a trending topic on Twitter, meaning that it has gone into the stratosphere as far as word of mouth is concerned.
At the time of writing I’m seeing around 200 new tweets per minute that mention the company.
One slightly worrying aspect is that Twitter appears to have removed the ‘#trafigura’ from the trending topics. We’ll monitor this throughout the day. Nevertheless, ‘Trafigura’ without the hashtag is seen in the trends, as is ‘Carter-Ruck’, the company’s legal representatives.
This tidal wave of tweets makes for particularly bad PR, given the banning order against the newspaper. It’s a bit like an artist achieving a Radio 1 ban, which can result in chart success. What you seek to suppress only generates further interest.
It really does show the power of social media in spreading word. PRs and legal eagles take note. As far as keeping this under the radar, well… this really is an epic fail. Carter-Ruck’s presence on Google Maps has started to attract negative reviews. It could be the tip of the iceberg, forcing the firm into a massive clean-up operation.
Now for some further reading…
- You can see Trafigura trending on the excellent Trendsmap.
- Joanne Jacobs has posted an excellent article called ‘How social media can guard against the misuse of libel‘, replete with lots of juicy links.
- Here are two original articles by the Guardian and BBC on the Trafigura investigation.
- Finally, here’s the trailer for the seminal 80s B-movie ‘The Toxic Avenger’!
[Image by Shht! on Flickr, various rights reserved]