WebProNews

Four People Who Don't Get "The Internet"

It’s interesting how “the Internet” has come to be a singularly collective, authoritative entity. On a radio morning show today, a woman called in and said, regarding concrete foundations, “the Internet said you needed footers.”

How Bad Times Are Good Times For Small Business

Bankruptcies are the highest they’ve been since 2001, a million people have lost their jobs, and small businesses got the stimulus package shaft. And that’s the good news. It’s all good news, says Mark Deo, executive director of The Small Business Advisory Network and author of The Rules of Attraction: Fourteen Practical Rules to Help Get the Right Clients, Talent and Resources to Come to You!

Senate Looks Into Deceptive Online Marketing

Senate Commerce Chairman Jay Rockefeller (D-W.VA.) has launched an investigation into certain ecommerce marketing practices that generate thousands of mysterious monthly charges to consumer credit cards. The source of these monthly fees comes from a group of marketing companies that obtain consumers' billing information through agreements with popular online retail sites.

Gov't Still Doesn't Know How To Deal With Internet Sex

The way state attorneys general have been dealing with sex in the digital age lately shows government officials have no idea how to deal with sex in the digital age. Two cases in point: craigslist erotic services listings and teen sexting.

Sony CEO Says He Does So Get The Internet

Sony Pictures CEO Michael Lynton fired back at critics roused by his statement that nothing good has come from the Internet with a lengthy column published on the Huffington Post.

Iran Lifts Ban On Facebook

Iran has lifted its ban on Facebook after blocking it to prevent supporters of a moderate in the presidential race from using it for his campaign. "A few minutes ago Facebook was unblocked," Ilna news agency reported. The agency is considered to be close to the reformist candidates running in the June 12 election.

EBay Pressures Senate To Outlaw Minimum Pricing

eBay, Burlington Coat Factory, and the US Federal Trade Commission are pressuring the US Senate to pass a law banning vertical price-fixing, effectively overturning a 2007 Supreme Court decision. Manufacturers and retailers actually call it vertical “retail price management” (RPM). The practice entails setting a minimum price retailers can sell specific items for. Remember last Christmas, when you spent hours online comparative shopping only to find out everybody who carried it was selling it for exactly the same price?

The Long Arm Of Internet Law

The new digital society brings up lots of questions and existing law doesn’t always answer them. In cases where it does, the answer doesn’t often make sense. It’s as though, if law wasn’t complicated enough, governments are going to have rewrite their legal code from the ground up. So as that painful process continues—my guess is for at least the next 40-50 years—the law and the Internet are clashing with increasing frequency. To follow are just six (out of dozens) of recent examples.

FTC Issues Restraining Order Against Yahoo, MSN

On behalf of the Federal Trade Commission, a federal court issued a restraining order against Yahoo, MSN, AllTheWeb, and Altavista to prevent the search engines from allowing mortgage finance scammers to use a government URL in sponsored search results, thus representing themselves as the operator of the site.

Associated Blogosphere Seeds Begin To Sprout

I’ve been trying to coin phrases since I started this gig in 2005—fraugs (fraud blogs), googlings (Google nuts), spitter (Twitter spammer) etc.—and not a one has stuck except “hamsterbating,” which I didn’t actually create but was credited for in an online dictionary.