Senate Prepares Grill For Google

Google will find out if the $580,000 spent on lobbying this year, and the addition of in-house lobbyists to complement the firms they employ in Washington, will have yielded a good return on investment.

The Washington Wire blog at the Wall Street Journal said Google will face the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Antitrust, Competition Policy and Consumer Rights on September 27th for a 2 pm examination of the merger.

Washington Wire blogger John R. Wilke expects Microsoft and Yahoo to have participants in attendance to challenge Google’s attendees over the transaction. Microsoft in particular has stridently objected to a deal that could create an online ad monopoly, in their view.

Scott Cleland of Precursor is expected to attend, and present the case for blocking the merger on antitrust grounds. Thomas Lenard, acting president of The Progress & Freedom Foundation, will appear in support of Google’s proposal.

We noticed Google has a little something going on with DoubleClick already, related to their debut of Gadget Ads. One of the help questions related to the new product noted that Gadget Ads will run on DoubleClick’s DART network as well as sites participating in Google AdSense.

A Google spokesperson contacted for additional details about Gadget Ads could not comment further on DoubleClick’s role in participating with the new service.

We’re betting the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee won’t appreciate ‘no’ for an answer next week.

Here’s Your 15 Minutes And Your DMCA Notice

Have a seat. This could take a minute.

A YouTube user submits his video to YouTube and it becomes popular to the tune of millions of views. And the user gets, well, his 15 minutes.

According to YouTube’s terms of use, YouTube gets the rights to sell that video to whomever they like. The user hasn’t forfeited rights to the video, just rights to profit from the upload. YouTube and the user both hold rights to the video as long as the video is on the website.

However, it’s unlikely that the user has a connection to media powerhouses like, say, Viacom, which slapped YouTube’s parent company Google with a billion-dollar copyright infringement lawsuit as soon as the ink was dry on the acquisition papers.

Admittedly, nearly a year later, you can still find virtually any music video you want on YouTube (Viacom owns MTV and VH1) – in fact, YouTube’s pretty much the MTV of the Internet. So Viacom’s concern about their intellectual property is understandable.

What many have taken issue with so far though, is the company’s overzealous pressing of its rights. Viacom sends out DMCA takedown notices like AOL used to send out free CDs. YouTube has blindly complied with the notices, removing content whether or not it was actual infringement in efforts to protect itself.

This led to the MoveOn.org laying some Fair Use bait for Viacom, and a subsequent lawsuit by the Electronic Frontier Foundation that forced an admission from the media giant that there is, indeed, such a thing as Fair Use. In fact, much of Viacom programming, like Comedy Central’s "The Daily Show" and "The Colbert Report" rely on it.

As does another show: "Web Junk."

"Web Junk" is a show that runs on VH1 featuring the week’s most popular viral video from the Internet. Much, nearly all, of the content on the show comes from you-know-where.

Now, the irony would be much too sublime if Viacom was violating YouTube’s terms of use that prohibit transmitting YouTube videos in a non-streaming format for commercial use without YouTube’s permission. No, we’ll assume Viacom licensed the videos through YouTube like they were supposed to.

Which means, again, YouTube and Google, who are being sued by Viacom, are also making money from Viacom, who is also making money from YouTube content while the uploader gets his 15 minutes.

But wait it gets worse.

Christopher Knight has a word for one of Viacom’s latest actions: "chutzpa." It’s a Yiddish word, if you didn’t know, for "unbelievable gall or audacity." Knight’s video was viewed a few hundred thousand times on YouTube before being featured on "Web Junk."

He didn’t complain, according his blog post about it, and thought Aries Spears’ commentary was funny. He posted a clip from the episode featuring the commentary on his YouTube video back on YouTube.

You can guess what happened next.

Knight writes, "So Viacom took a video that I had made for non-profit purposes and without trying to acquire my permission, used it in a for-profit broadcast. And then when I made a YouTube clip of what they did with my material, they charged me with copyright infringement and had YouTube pull the clip.

"Folks, this is, as we say down here in the south, "bass-ackwards".

Well, that’s one way to put it. Another way might be to suggest that Web 3.0 comes with some user content rights.

The oft-repeated argument that Canada is some sort of free zone for harboring content has been called into contention by Canadian law professor and copyright expert Michael Geist. As noted on Boing Boing, Geist and filmmaker Daniel Albahary have released a short, under nine minutes, video disclaiming the bitter complaining from their southern neighbors.

A dream come true for American interests would be the establishment of laws similar to the much-criticized DMCA in the US. Takedown notices could then be dispatched to any ISP suspected of having an evil content-uploader or host on their network.

There are a few problems with the perception American interests have tried to establish about Canada, and it’s these that Geist chose to fight with the video. In one example, he shows how Canada complies with international copyright law, including the well-known Berne Convention.

With regards to illegal camcording claims by Hollywood, Geist noted, “Canadian copyright law already addresses illegal camcording with the possibility of jail time and significant fines.”

Geist also cited a confidential report on global Hollywood movie revenue growth in 2006. The so-called pirate haven to the north experienced the highest revenue growth in the world for movies.

That looks at odds with claims of rampant piracy.

On the music side, the Canadian Recording Industry Association (CRIA) depicted Canadians as thieves who “will continue to steal other people’s property.” But Canada’s 122 percent digital music download sales growth easily eclipsed growth figures for the US (60 percent) and Europe (85 percent.)

“Peer-to-peer downloading is arguably compensated by the private copying levy, which places a levy on each blank CD sold in Canada,” Geist noted in the video. He blames the industry’s reliance on DRM for their woes.

Nailing down accusations of widespread counterfeiting products has been difficult. Geist claims not enough data exists, and that an investigating committee relied on data later acknowledged by the collecting agency to be inaccurate and overstated.

“Canadian policy should prioritize Canadian interests, not those of foreign governments and lobby groups,” said Geist.

 Human Rights Watch asks:

How will China’s pervasive censorship and control of domestic and international media and the Internet play out when thousands of international journalists descend on Beijing? How are the Olympic Games being used to justify the violent forced evictions of thousands of people from their homes? (…) Human Rights Watch hopes that the 2008 Olympics will be an impetus for China to demonstrate greater respect for the human rights guaranteed to all under international law.

You got one answer right there on Google when you compare the search results for the query china olympics: the page I quoted from above is available on Google.com’s Chinese search engine, but censored on Google.cn.

Certainly, this example is arbitrary… because whatever Human Rights Watch writes will be censored in Google China, completely automated. And certainly, it’s an English query, and many Chinese will query in Chinese. But you’ll be hitting on these censored queries in Chinese too: I just translated “olympics criticism” into Chinese using Google’s translator, and there’s again a self-censored result in the top 10 (per Google’s own disclosure, which reads “?????????????????????” – along the lines of “in compliance with local laws or regulations, some search results are missing"; you can find further validation by following up with a site-query for the domain you suspect to be censored, e.g. site:news.bbc.co.uk). Arbitrary as the example may be, you can be sure that there’s tens of thousands to millions of “missing” results for Chinese users on Google everyday. Because we often consult search engines in times where we want to learn something, a missing piece of knowledge can shape our thinking and have real-life consequences. Many Chinese users, thankfully, will be too smart to fully trust Google.cn results at this point.

Google claims they have 100 different means to rank a website – PageRank just being one of many –, and out of 7 million pages, Google’s algorithm decided that the Human Rights Watch page in question belongs into the top 10 for the query china olympics (even though it’s dangerous for any Chinese webmaster to link to this page, which can have the effect of downranking it almost “naturally”). But there’s a single thing which can overrule any of those 100 fine-tuned algorithms: a single government decision.

Google’s Eric Schmidt argues that engagement will bring improvement – but these are just overgeneralizations. Some engagement can have horrible consequences (IBM “engaged” in Nazi Germany by providing machines that were specifically tailored to register racial data among the population, even at a time when the Nazis delivered openly anti-Semite statements – in fact, even at a time when it was illegal per US law for US businesses to engage in Germany), while other engagement might bring improvements. So instead of such statements, Google should give people specifics. For starters, which “local laws or regulations” does HRW.org violate, justifying that its around 46,300 pages indexed in international Google are censored by Google China? When webmasters find their site banned, they can file a reinclusion request with Google; but where do I file my request if I suspect my site to be banned not due to cloaking or hidden links, but due to government-critical statements? (Is it good SEO in China to not speak critical of my government – are there any Google webmaster guidelines as to what may get you removed?) And who at Google is responsible for making the decisions which censorship requests are acceptable and which aren’t – or does Google accept every censorship request in China (and other countries where there are self-censored results)?

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Google, Holocaust Museum Map ‘Crisis in Darfur’

Hundreds of thousands of people are believed to have lost their lives since the Darfur conflict erupted in February 2003. Systematic human rights abuses have occurred, including killing, torture, rape, looting and destroying of property by all parties involved in the conflict, but primarily by the Sudanese government and government-backed Janjawid militia.
-- Amnesty International, on human rights concerns in Sudan

An online mapping initiative backed by the Holocaust Museum and empowered by Google Earth will bring the Darfur crisis into focus. Today a Global Awareness layer containing photographs, data and eyewitness testimony about Darfur became available in Google Earth.

Crisis in Darfur is the first project of the Museum

The problems started with an ice storm that naturally led to flights being grounded, but once air travel resumed JetBlue found itself lagging in getting their operation running again. We all know things happen and in this case JetBlue dropped the ball. However their response to the situation is more telling about the company than the temporary problems they faced.

As someone who had flown JetBlue I received an email a few days after the events as did all JetBlue customers. The email was a public apology from CEO David Neeleman.

You deserved better – a lot better – from us last week and we let you down. Nothing is more important than regaining your trust and all of us here hope you will give us the opportunity to once again welcome you onboard and provide you the positive JetBlue Experience you have come to expect from us.

Sure the apology is in part about damage control, but I think they went beyond reputation management here. JetBlue could very easily have blamed the weather and moved on. Instead they took responsibility for not being able to handle the circumstances better and owned up to their mistakes. They didn’t stop at the apology, though.

JetBlue drafted a customer bill of rights to insure the company remains accountable for its service in the future. Included in the customer’s rights are vouchers up to the price of the one way ticket for long controllable delays.

Additionally the airline is taking an internal look at why they had the issues they had during the weather emergency and taking measures to make sure something similar doesn’t happen again. Much of the measure involve hiring and training additional staff and improving the flow of information to it’s customers.

A lot of companies point to their superior customer support as part of their marketing. For most companies this is little more than lip service. JetBlue is showing with their apology, their customer bill of rights, and their internal improvements that customer service is more than just a promise from them. The company is actively practicing customer service and there is no better way to market customer support as a selling point.

Things happen. We all know and accept that. Sometimes circumstances beyond your control lead to less than successful days for your business. Owning up to your mistakes and learning from them is the best approach to maintaining the loyalty of your customers. Your customers will understand if you’re not perfect. What they won’t understand is you trying to convince them otherwise. Make yourself accountable and work to improve your systems so the same mistake doesn’t happen again.

There are reasons JetBlue has been one of the fastest growing airlines over the last few years. One of them is a clear commitment to providing the best experience they can for their customers. Their recent apology and customer bill of rights are examples of that commitment.

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Billable Rights of the SEO Client

1. The client has a right to expect the SEO to fulfill contract in full. If you don’t have time to work on the account, refund my money so I can hire someone who does.
2. The client has a right to know what will be done to his site by the SEO. Don’t give me any nonsense about "proprietary strategies. You’re messing with my site, I want to know what you’re doing.
3. The client has a right to know the SEO tactics to be implemented externally. I’m paying you so tell me what you’re doing for me.
4. The client has a right not to have their site penalized or thrown out of the search engines due to SEO tactics.
5. The client has a right to question SEO results and value of the work performed. If I don’t see results I’ll be asking you why. Maybe I just need you to show me how to see the results.
6. The client has a right to consult other SEO experts about the value of the work performed.
7. The client has a right to buy out of the SEO contract at any time. If I don’t want your services anymore, let me pay for the full contract so I can move on.
8. The client has a right to maintain ownership of all work performed by the SEO. I’m not paying per click, so anything you do with my money is mine to keep.
9. The client has a right to expect SEO work performed to increase traffic and sales/conversions. If I’m not seeing more sales then I’m not getting my money’s worth.
10. The client has a right to not have site hijacked, mutilated or destroyed by SEO. I expect quality work for my money.

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About the Author

Stoney deGeyter is president of Pole Position Marketing (www.PolePositionMarketing.com), a search engine optimization / marketing firm providing SEO and website marketing services since 1998. Stoney is also a part-time instructor at Truckee Meadows Community College, as well as a moderator in the Small Business Ideas Forum. He is the author of his E-Marketing Performance eBook and contributes daily to the E-Marketing Performance (www.eMarketingPerformance.com) marketing blog.

The legal wrangling has actually been going on for some time, and this was only the latest decision that didn’t fall in the search engine company’s favor. Google’s opponent: German-born venture capitalist Daniel Giersch, according to The Register’s Jan Libbenga.

“The German entrepreneur founded a same-day mail delivery service called G-mail designed to offer a swifter alternative to the Deutsche Post,” wrote Libbenga. “Giersch, who has held his trademark for six years, has been fighting this battle since Google launched its email service in 2004.”

Now – much to Google’s chagrin – the matter appears to have been resolved. The company’s latest appeal was rejected, and it doesn’t look like there’s anywhere else for it to go (in a legal sense).

“That’s got to sting,” Nate Anderson observed, “as Google is a company used to getting its way, but it comes as consolation to Giersch, who said in an interview last year that ‘Google’s behavior is very threatening, very aggressive and very unfaithful, and to me, it’s very evil.’”

Maybe Google Germany isn’t so much evil as cranky – things really haven’t been going its way lately. About a week ago, the company even lost ownership of the google.de domain, and although the situation was quickly resolved, it couldn’t have improved anyone’s disposition.

At least bookkeeping for Google’s e-mail service will be a little simpler – Anderson writes that “it now looks it will be ‘Google Mail’ throughout Europe.”

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Doug is a staff writer for WebProNews. Visit WebProNews for the latest eBusiness news.

Amnesty To Press UN On Blogger Rights

The Internet Governance Forum Greece 2006 started today, as part of the UN’s encouragement of more discussion of the issues central to how its member nations regulate the Internet. Topics they will discuss include cybersecurity, privacy, and human rights.

Amnesty International noted it will have a delegation at the proceedings, to help keep the human rights discussion in the minds of attendees. The conference’s Greek hosts did themselves no favors by arresting a native blogger last week (noted under 10:30 ATHENS):

(For our American readers who may be unversed in the ways of soccer, just think of a “spectacular own goal” as Peyton Manning throwing a pass to Marvin Harrison and him running to the wrong end zone.)

That incident and the efforts of the Chinese government to register its bloggers will have Amnesty pushing conference attendees to acknowledge and remedy the human rights violations the organization has witnessed in China and other countries:

Corante blogger Alexandra Samuel questioned the ability for Amnesty to make significant inroads at IGF Greece, considering that human rights are just one part of its conference agenda. The organization has hopes that it can have an impact be being involved now, according to Amnesty’s Erica Radzook responding to Samuel:

To make sure no one forgets the role of major companies in the issue of Internet freedom, Amnesty reminded everyone of the actions of a trio of big Internet players:

People interested in using their websites to help increase awareness of online censorship, one of the many issues the IGF will discuss this week and over the course of its five-year run, can place code on their sites to publish censored material that would otherwise be blocked. Here is how one format of the code would look on a site:

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David Utter is a staff writer for WebProNews covering technology and business.

There are some products that are bundled with the resell packages that are very useful and then there are others that are a waste of computer space.

For example, there are outdated pop-up generators and meta tag generators. Do you really think someone is going to buy a software that will create a few paragraphs of text for you? Only if you’re selling to those who have never buy any resale rights products before.

When I’m buying products to resell there are several criteria they must follow:

1. They must have a minimum suggested resale price.

I’ve seen time and time again products that originally sold well for $100 to $200 which are rendered totally worthless because the authors didn’t set a minimum price on their product.

For example, if one reseller gives a product away for free as a bonus for whatever reason then other resellers get discouraged because they think “how can I sell mine for $200 when he’s giving it away for free?”

2. They must be sold as a stand alone product.

Again, this is to protect the value of the product. If another reseller is including it in a package, I won’t be able to easily sell it for a high margin. However, if the product are allowed to be package with certain terms and conditions, then it’s a good buy because I can repackage it as well in my other future promotion.

3. I must be able to change the sales page.

I want to be able to change the graphics and add my own personality to the sales page. I don’t want to be restricted to using the same sales page as everyone else. The more I can separate myself from the crowd, the better. Also, being a testing maniac, I know I can always improve the response of any sales letter if I can change it.

Actually, I prefer buying products that don’t include a sales page. I know my competitors will be too lazy to come up with a sales page so I’m a winner already.

4. The product must not be old.

I don’t want to promote an outdated product. The newer the product, the lesser people have seen it. There are exceptions of course.

You can bring an old product to life by giving it a new sales page and graphics. Some older products may not be promoted anymore by people because they’ve dropped out of the spotlight. You can often get the resell rights cheaper for older products.

5. The product must be good.

There are many products that seem to be just a long sales letter for affiliate programs. They make their money mainly on the resale rights. Surprising but true, most people who buy resale rights to a product will not do anything with the product. They just want to have the ability to resell it when they want to.

The resale rights owner is in the clear because if his customers aren’t trying to sell the product then he doesn’t have to deal with complaints. I want to at least make my money back on the investment. If the product is crappy I will get a lot of refund requests. I make sure the product is high quality before I buy it.

Bonus Tip: I try to devise a plan to sell my resell rights product before I buy it. By devising a plan, I can just buy the rights and then put it to use right away to make my investment back. If I can’t come up with a plan for that product, I just won’t invest in it.

Tip #2: If you plan to buy the product, get the master resell rights if they’re available. This way you can sell the product and sell the resell rights as an upsell.

6. Get Customization Rights If Available

A few product owners will sell you the customization rights to the product. Whether you can sell the product or give the product away, you need to know when you should buy those customization rights and when not to.

People will value something more if they pay for it. The more they have to pay, the more they’ll value it. If you buy the customization rights to a free e-book you have very little chance to make money with the affiliate links inside the e-book. That’s because, people will not value the e-book enough to read it. Free information has a less perceived value than information that has a fee.

Another point to this is that when someone seeks free information, it’s more likely they won’t spend money on whatever product the free e-book is promoting. If you want to buy customization rights to a product make sure that the product can’t be given away.

The higher the price of the product that you’re buying customization rights to, the more likely you will make a commission on the affiliate links that you rebrand.

Judge for yourself if someone were to buy your customized e-book, will they value it enough to read it, and if they read it, will they buy the products that are promoted in the e-book. Do the affiliate programs in the e-book provide relevant and useful tools for the target audience of the e-book?

When you buy customization to a good e-book, and you sell that ebook, make sure to keep in contact with your customers so that you can get them to open up the e-book and read it. That’s a good way to get them to spend more money on the backend. If they don’t take any action then they won’t need to spend any money.

In conclusion, buying and selling resale rights products is definitely an easy short cut to make money online . Provided you know how to select a good one.

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Patric Chan is the founder of The Chan Do Internet Success
System and co-creator of Win In The Niche Resale Rights
Package with the Master Business Optimizer, Stephen Pierce
at http://www.winintheniche.com/resale.html