Posts tagged Reasons
6 Reasons Why Adding Google+ to Your Web Presence & SEO Strategy is a Good Idea – iMedia Connection (blog)
Jan 30th
 Promotion World (press release) |
6 Reasons Why Adding Google+ to Your Web Presence & SEO Strategy is a Good Idea
iMedia Connection (blog) This is proof that the lines between social networking, social media and SEO are indeed thinning and that social networking and social signals are becoming more important to the practice of SEO. Google+ is a social networking force to be reckoned with … The (Quickly) Changing Role of Twitter in SEO |
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Thought SOPA Was Bad? 10 Reasons to Oppose ACTA
Jan 27th
So, we’ve shot down SOPA and PIPA. Congratulations Internets for a job well done. Mission accomplished, right? Not so much. While that’s two bad pieces of legislation pushed back, there’s much more where that came from. Leaving aside existing nastiness like the DMCA, we also have the even nastier Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) (PDF). How bad is it? Bad enough that the European Parliament’s rapporteur for ACTA (Kader Arif) resigned over it today (January 27, 2012). Unfortunately for those of us in the United States, President Obama has already ratified ACTA on behalf of the United States.
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If you haven’t heard much about ACTA, don’t be surprised. You see, you really weren’t supposed to hear anything about ACTA until well after it was ratified and far too late for the rabble to do anything about it. That’s what, in large part, led to Arif’s resignation.
As Wayne Rash wrote earlier this week, "ACTA is, in effect, a treaty, negotiated in secret by the U.S. Trade Representative, Ron Kirk… Until recently, the actual text of ACTA was so secret that only a few lawyers outside of the White House and the USTR offices had actually seen it. And those people were required to sign non-disclosure agreements."
What ACTA Is
The goal of ACTA, says the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) is "to create a new standard of intellectual property enforcement above the current internationally-agreed standards in the TRIPs Agreement and increased international cooperation including sharing of information between signatory countries’ law enforcement agencies."
The EFF backgrounder also provides some insight to ACTA. While President Obama is carrying the torch for ACTA right now, the treaty goes back to October 2007 (or farther) when the U.S., Japan, Switzerland and the European Community said they’d be working on a new intellectual property enforcement treaty.
ACTA isn’t the only area where (as the EFF puts it) "copyright industry rightsholder groups have sought stronger powers to enforce their intellectual property rights… to preserve their business models." But it is getting closer to reality.
Note that our own Scott Fulton observes that some of the protests against ACTA object to provisions that have been removed from the treaty. What this doesn’t note is that many other objectionable provisions remain. Fulton also says "you can’t be arrested for an ACTA violation." This is true, but only half the story. People can and will be arrested for violations of laws that result from nations complying with the treaty.
The word is that ACTA probably doesn’t change U.S. law. Probably? Nobody’s entirely sure. But as Techdirt calls out "it certainly does function to lock in US law, in a rapidly changing area of law, where specifics are far from settled." It also, of course, serves to dictate compliance in other countries.
Why ACTA Is Unacceptable
- ACTA was negotiated in secret – for me, this is reason enough to oppose any legislation or regulation. I don’t care if it’s the "Hugs for Puppies and Kittens Act," if people aren’t given an opportunity to engage with their lawmakers about a law, it shouldn’t be enacted.
- Ridiculous damages – ACTA specifies "presumptions for determining damages" that basically assume that all of the infringed goods had sold. To put it another way, ACTA takes the position that if a user uploads a song to a file-sharing network, damages should be calculated as if the recipients would have paid for the work in question. This is ridiculous, as has been explained any number of places. Many people who download illicit copies would simply never have purchased the work in question had it not been available for free.
- It may be unconstitutional – The Obama administration is claiming that ACTA not a treaty, but an "executive agreement" and thus not subject to legislative approval. As Rash notes in his eWeek piece, Congress does not agree.
- It’s over-broad – TK It’s worth noting that not all of ACTA is necessarily bad. Some of the agreement is targeted at countering counterfeit goods that may be actively harmful, like counterfeit prescription drugs. But ACTA goes well beyond single areas of intellectual property and essentially tries to bear-hug everything IP-related. Not good.
- The ACTA committee is not accountable – ACTA creates a body outside of national and even international bodies, called the "ACTA Committee." (At least the name is honest.) The committee would not be accountable to the people governed by the agreement. Folks in the United States can vote out Lamar Smith and others who endorsed SOPA/PIPA, but we would have no real influence on the ACTA Committee.
- Low threshhold for violations – as the European Digital Rights group points out (PDF), ACTA’s unclear wording would make it very easy for unintentional copyright infringement to rise to the level of a criminal act.
- No fair use provisions – As this opinion on ACTA by Eddan Katz and Gwen Hinze notes, ACTA would "export one half of the complex U.S. legal regime" but "without accompanying exceptions and limitations." In short, ACTA would not include fair use provisions and such that we expect in the U.S.
- Criminalizes what used to be a civil offense – An opinion prepared by Douwe Korff and Ian Brown notes, "ordinary companies and individuals could be criminalised for innocent activities or trivial breaches of copyright, or for technical breaches that serve a wider, overriding public interest (as in whistleblowing), without an appropriate defence." The EFF says "If the real intent behind introducing expanded criminal sanctions is to address infringement on the Internet, this provision is not likely to do so, but is likely to cause significant collateral harm to consumers."
- Locks In DMCA-Like Provisions – As the EFF notes (PDF) in its submission to the USTR, ACTA would "lock in" some of the controversial aspects of the DMCA that require legal enforcement against circumventing copy protection, etc. In other words, don’t get too set on the idea of jailbreaking that iPhone.
- ACTA could be used against legitimate medications – As I noted earlier, looking to crack down on counterfeit drugs is good. Going after legitimate "grey market" drugs, that’s another story. Yet as techdirt notes "there are very reasonable concerns that ACTA will be used to crack down, not on actual counterfeit medicines, but on "grey market" drugs – generic, but legal, copies of medicines. Some European nations, for example, already have a history of seizing shipments of perfectly legal generic drugs in passage to somewhere else."
That’s 10, but I’m sure there are more. As I wrote on January 18th sending SOPA/PIPA to the legislative trashbin for the year is great, but not enough. SOPA/PIPA are not the only laws that threaten the free and open Internet. There’s plenty of bad policy to go around at the state, national, and international levels. One round of annoyed phone calls to Congress is not going to do the trick. Even if it’s too late to stop ACTA, there’s even worse coming.
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Top 10 Reasons Your Facebook Campaign Isn’t Working
Jan 27th
To most PPC marketers, the Facebook paid ads program represents an ideal marketing opportunity. Finally, you aren’t limited to targeting your ads based on geographic location and time of day alone (I’m looking at you, Google Adwords!). In fact, if you wanted to run a campaign targeting 16 year old boys in San Francisco who [...]
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7 Reasons Why Blogging Is Still Important in 2012
Jan 25th
Some people would like you to think blogging as we know it is over. They share the eye-popping numbers for Tumblr’s growth, for example: 355 million unique visitors per month, and 400 million pageviews per day. And it’s true that Twitter and Facebook have lead many people away from blogging. But publishing content on a [...]
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SES New York 2012: Three Key Reasons For Video Marketers & Producers To Attend – ReelSEO Online Video News
Jan 20th
 ReelSEO Online Video News |
SES New York 2012: Three Key Reasons For Video Marketers & Producers To Attend
ReelSEO Online Video News Greg Jarboe is president and co-founder of SEO-PR, which provides search engine optimization, online public relations, online video marketing, and social media marketing services. Jarboe is author of "YouTube and Video Marketing: An Hour a Day", … SES New York 2012 Names Avinash Kaushik, Digital Marketing Evangelist Google … |
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10 Reasons to Use Foursquare Explore for Personalized Local Searches
Jan 16th
Foursquare recently announced “Explore”, their new web-based tool that takes geosocial and local search to a new level. Check out these enticing perks that come along with the new features.
Beyond mobile check-ins for badges and mayorship battle…
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2 Reasons Outsourcing SEO Will Crumble Your Sales – Business 2 Community
Jan 12th
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2 Reasons Outsourcing SEO Will Crumble Your Sales
Business 2 Community By Amie Marse, Published January 12, 2012 Don't let SEO scare you. It's a tool just like any other. Think of it as a group of information that can be seen from various perspectives. And just like no two people describe the scene of a crime in the same … |
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The New Era Of Display: 5 Reasons Search Marketers Should Care
Jan 11th
Chefs. Musicians. Athletes. Each is a master in their own discipline. Yet, many of these folks have skills that can be leveraged in a completely different channel with great success. Quite often, making the leap to another field can open up an entirely new world for them. And that’s exactly what…
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3 Reasons We Hope Google Books Gets Better
Dec 21st
Google Books has had trouble on the content side. Google’s approach has been too gung-ho, trying to “digitize the world’s books” before publishers were ready for it. It also doesn’t have the hardware reach that Amazon and Apple have. The only Android tablets taking off are the ones custom-built by Amazon and Barnes & Noble, who obviously prefer their own book businesses.
But Google’s game is information. That’s how Google Books is positioned – not as a content business or a hardware business, but as an information business. Google wants knowledge to be accessible. The Kindle service might be the best integrated with devices, and iBooks might look great on the demo floor of an Apple Store. But as a set of features for an e-book service, I’m rooting for Google Books.
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Friendly Formats
Kindle and iBooks are locked down. Their formats only work in their own environments. Google uses ePub and PDF, which means you can get them onto any device, one way or another. To read it on your Kindle, you’ll have to settle for the PDF version, but hey, it works. For all the other major reading devices, Google Books will help you get your e-book on there, no matter how hard the device makes it.
Furthermore, Google offers rights owners the ability to license their books under Creative Commons, so the public can share and remix them. And thanks to Google’s friendliness around digital rights management, lots of Google Books are free.
Offline Reading In The Browser
There’s also the browser option. Yesterday, Google Books gave Chrome users the ability to read offline. The laptop is not the ideal place to read, compared to an e-ink reader or a tablet, and those allow offline reading, too. But not everyone has the luxury of owning multiple travel-sized computers. The Kindle Cloud Reader is a nice Web view, too, and it has offline reading. There’s no denying that Kindle is an awesome service. But Google Books is more compatible overall, and now it has this feature, too.
The Whole History of the Written Word
Google’s mission is to catalog the world’s information and make it searchable. That’s why Google digitizes books in the first place. In true Google form, users get free tools like the Google Books Ngram Viewer, which lets us search the whole history of language. Google Books contains over 10% of the books ever published, dating back to 1400. That means, when you search the Ngram Viewer, you’re getting a sizable sample of humanity’s linguistic history.
Check out our post from after the launch of the Ngram Viewer to see how cool this book search tool is. And nobody but Google could build this on top of a book platform. Google Books may not be the snazziest e-book service, but it’s the one with the right philosophy.
Do you read e-books? What services do you use, and what devices do you use for reading?
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10 Reasons why you should go to Affiliate Summit West 2012
Dec 21st
I’m writing this to those of you who have never went or have never heard of the Affiliate Summit conferences. The conference name does imply this is heavily targeted to affiliates, but the online marketing material it covers pertains to anybody. I’ve gone to quite a few over the years and have always gained something [...]
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