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Google's Ban of an Anti-MoveOn.org Ad
Posted by
kdawson
on Sat Oct 13, 2007 04:06 PM
from the trademarks-are-not-political dept.
from the trademarks-are-not-political dept.
Whip-hero writes in with an Examiner.com story about Google's rejection of an ad critical of MoveOn.org. The story rehashes the controversy over MoveOn.org's ad that ran in the NYTimes on the first day of testimony of Gen. Petraeus's Senate testimony. The rejected ad was submitted on behalf of Maine Republican Senator Susan Collins — its text is reproduced in the article. The implication, which has been picked up by many blogs on the other side of the spectrum from MoveOn.org, is that Google acted out of political favoritism. Not so, says Google's policy counsel: Google's trademark policy allows any trademark holder to request that its marks not be used in ads; and MoveOn.org had made such a request.
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Sooo.... (Score:5, Insightful)
It'll be news if they submitted an ad WITHOUT infringing on a trademark, and that was rejected.
Re:Sooo.... (Score:5, Insightful)
All of the paranoia, all of the rhetoric, all of te tin foil goes away once it's the other side being muzzled, instead of yours. More proof (as if any where needed) of the complete lack of principles from most of the political slashdot crew.
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Re:Sooo.... (Score:5, Interesting)
Honestly, if you're going to criticize someone you may as well spell out who you're criticizing, what with the ton of different acronyms we have today.
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Re:Sooo.... (Score:5, Insightful)
Now google's tough break in the situation being what it is when they enforced the policy isn't as important then what Moveon.org claims to be and what they did. It is obvious that the use of the trademark was fair and legal, and it is obvious that it was over political speech. Now, anyone at google could have said, wait, what is this? and looked at the policy, the ad, and made the decision over the merits of the case. Some people tend to think they actually did that and made the decision to pull the ad.
But what my real problem is about, is all the responses that act like there is nothing wrong with squashing political speech in this way. The entire sarcasm I put in there was the exact same arguments made over the ban on flag burning that pissed everyone off. I was attempting to outrage people with those comments but it seems as if they are acceptable now. For some reasons, the majority of people don't seem to care when it works out to benefit a side they like. And I think that is completely wrong. Either free speech means something or it doesn't. And yes, in almost every other media outlet, there are special rules concerning political speech that force it to be carried. These rules even force the lowest rate for the slot to be charged. So expecting Google to keep an ad up isn't to far of a stretch. I just hope their actions doesn't create a storm of laws governing advertisements over the interweb.
I guess It would be funny to see hillary2008.com or whatever forced to advertise or carry a banner ad for rudy or barak. But if you ask me, I am disappointed all around, Once for google pulling the ad, regardless of their policy, once again for moveon.org's hand in it, and probably mostly by the lack of outrage when it effect the "other side" of the issue. And that makes you wonder if all the other outragfe isn't just some sort of way to impose a political idea instead of something we should truly be outraged over. Political speech should be something on top of the list.
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Re:Sooo.... (Score:5, Insightful)
We're being played. Used by the wealthy and powerful, tricked into fighting over false grievances while the elites literally get away with murder.
Take a glance at TV any time, and you'll see ludicrous BS like "Hannity" and "Colmes." I put the names in quotes because they aren't real people; they are characters. Each is a bumbling caricature of what the opposite political party is supposed to look like. Republicans are supposed to hate the Colmes character, and Democrats are supposed to hate the Hannity character. In reality, neither character says anything reasonable nor worthwhile -- they are purely scripted to trigger the hate-phrases of their respective goading target.
This is just a single example, but when you start to look around you, you notice that almost everything in high-level politics works this way. There are a few exceptions among politicians, but they rarely get elected because they don't play along. Without accepting bribes from wealthy donors, a politician can't afford the ad spots needed to gain popular recognition. Likewise, there are a few exceptions in mainstream media, but they don't last long if they disrupt the flow of advertising money or if they offend their wealthy owners.
Why are we being played?
When we think that our enemies are our neighbors, we will not stand up to the megacorporations fleecing us, and their sycophants in Congress who pass laws to help them steal our money (in return for a small portion of it themselves). We'll quibble among ourselves while they get away with whatever they like. No, the wealthy and powerful aren't concertedly working together against us -- but they're much closer to each other than they are to the teeming masses far below them. They all benefit when we are their slave labor.
We end up supporting the court jester who appears to most closely support our views. In truth, the jesters are all just playing their parts, and they'll all get paid well at the end of the night. We, the paying audience, don't seem to realize it's just a show.
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new google ad in NYT (Score:5, Funny)
or
Goo-betray us?
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Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Sooo.... (Score:4, Informative)
No, you live in the United States, a country which, if it is to survive, must do something to improve its public education system.
The fact that it's possible to find Americans in places like Slashdot loudly and repeatedly trumpeting the supposed 'fact' that the USA is not or was never intended to be a democracy is, quite frankly, bizarre and not a little disturbing.
I assume that, like others of your ilk, you would like to say "it's a republic, not a democracy," but even if that wasn't what you were thinking, you're still quite wrong about the US.
Democracy [wikipedia.org] is a word that indicates a wide degree of citizen participation in either the selection of government officials, or in the direct governance of the state itself. But knowing that a state is a democracy is not the same as knowing how that state's government works.
The United States' peculiar flavour of republic [wikipedia.org], for example (with its Electoral College), is quite different from e.g. Canada's Constitutional Monarchy [wikipedia.org], but both are indisputably representative democracies [wikipedia.org].
I suspect that the distinction you really wished to make was between a direct democracy [wikipedia.org] and a representative democracy [wikipedia.org] and you may well be right that the United States has adopted more of the features of a direct democracy than its founders intended, but it's ridiculous to deny that it is and always has been democratically governed.
Interestingly, I came upon a stub article (for the term Republican Democracy [wikipedia.org]) on Wikipedia while assembling links for this post. It's rather weakly written and seems to exist to bolster these weirdly popular claims that the US is not a democracy (I find this Wikipedia entry a little chilling; is somebody astroturfing the idea that the US isn't a democracy?):
But it makes the same mistake that is usually made by those claiming that the US is not a democracy; that is, it appears to confuse a form of government (e.g. a republic) with a means of selecting such a government's officials (i.e. via democratic institutions). A republic need not be a democracy, and a democracy need not be a republic, but the US republic is a democracy.
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Re:Sooo.... (Score:4, Insightful)
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Re:Sooo.... (Score:5, Insightful)
It's just a trademark case. If the RNC told google to block any ads with the text 'republican national congress' in them, and they held a trademark for such, then Google would do so.
What a fool.
I can't think of any better way to eliminate political discourse than this. Every political entity should just trademark its name, and it can suppress any type of critical political ad. George Bush(tm). BS.
Trademarks were developed to eliminate brand confusion among commercial entities. They shouldn't be applicable to political entities. Use of any political organizations name should be fine on First Amendment grounds.
Google needs to start walking the 'do no evil' walk. It's not right for one of the world's biggest media companies to suppress protected political speech with which it disagrees.
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using a trademark <> infringing a trademark (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:using a trademark infringing a trademark (Score:3, Insightful)
They probably implemented the policy to stop people from running blatant smear campaigns via AdWords. This problem is perhaps more threatening via AdWords simply because it is automated and potentially anonymous. If it got out of hand, it could lose Google a lot of money as well as the interest of advertisers. Remember, ads were the big pot o' gold that dried up completely during the burst, and now that you can make money in internet advertising again, they are probably looking at every way that could self-
Re:using a trademark infringing a trademark (Score:5, Insightful)
The whole power of the ad was derived from the the trademarke MoveOn.org, if you read it with a generic liberal replaced, it just doesn't have the same impact. And that is why ultimately it was a legitimate request.
The group itself has a name which is likely in violation of trademark protections. As much as I would love for somebody to put MoveOn.org in their place, this was a legitimate move on the part of Google to try and protect a trademark.
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the court says: (Score:5, Insightful)
Therefore, Google's policy is When we receive a complaint from a trademark owner, we only investigate the use of the trademark in ad text. If the advertiser is using the trademark in ad text, we will require the advertiser to remove the trademark and prevent them from using it in ad text in the future. Please note that we will not disable keywords in response to a trademark complaint.
Their position is the only one that will increase shareholder value.
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Re:Sooo.... (Score:5, Insightful)
"That damn liberal media, they're trying to silence a candidate! Lets vote for her out of spite!"
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Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm quite sure that referencing a trademark when you're criticizing the holder is considered fair use, and Google is ignoring other ads that use trademarks in a similar fashion. Google may not have violated any law here, but if the article is telling the whole story, I would be hard put to say t
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Re:Sooo.... (Score:5, Insightful)
No, Trademark Law also has a fair use doctrine, which includes using trademarks nominatively. Otherwise you'd see Coke and Pepsi suing each other whenever one of them put out an ad comparing the two.
The article mentions anti-Blackwater and anti-Exxon ads as being "permitted" by Google, but it doesn't say whether or not the companies have requested takedowns.
Either way, if their trademark use policy doesn't allow for nominative use, it's faulty and needs to be fixed. Plenty of companies run comparative ads (our product versus Competitor X's product), which generally require the other company to be identified.
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Re:Sooo.... (Score:5, Informative)
Didn't this policy result from Google getting sued for allowing competitors to buy ads that keyed off a trademarked name?
I.e. if you searched for 'Hertz rental car', you'd get a bunch of Avis ads because Avis had paid for their ads to show up whenever someone searched for 'Hertz'?
Assuming that's the case, you can hardly blame Google - they're screwed either way.
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Re:Sooo.... (Score:4, Informative)
Actually, there is a statutory Fair Use [wikipedia.org] for trademarks. A nonowner may also use a trademark nominatively--to refer to the actual trademarked product or its source. In addition to protecting product criticism and analysis, United States law actually encourages nominative usage by competitors in the form of comparative advertising.
Of course, Google has been sued numerous times over ad keywords and content, so it's not unexpected.
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Re:Sooo.... (Score:5, Insightful)
Did you read the article, that's what happened! According to the article's quoted intellectual property expert:
But he called Google's removal of the Collins ads "troubling." Coleman says that there is no such requirement under trademark law and that Google appears to be selectively enforcing its policy.
"In a recent ruling, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals rejected the notion that there is anything like a cause of action under the Lanham Act, the statue governing trademark law in the United States, for so-called 'trademark disparagement,' " Coleman said. The courts have also rejected the notion that the use of a trademark as a search term is a "legally cognizable use" as a trademark use under federal trademark law, he added. Coleman is also general counsel for the Media Bloggers Association.
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Re:Sooo.... (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Sooo.... (Score:4, Informative)
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Re:Sooo.... (Score:4, Informative)
They did say that, but in corporatese (reid, oops, read their blog).
1) moveon requested no triggers based on their name. Smart.
2) antomveon fell awry of this. Awww, shucks.
3) Google told antimoveon how to chnage their ad so it was permissable. They declined.
antimoveon are not just losers, they're sore losers and dumb ones at that.
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Free Speech? (Score:3, Insightful)
Making ads with other people's trademarks should be protected, like if I'm some crappy beige box PC maker I can't really use trad
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
This is how politics work or doesn't work as the case may be.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Well, they are here too, but it instead of it being championed and echoed, it is being dropped as "well, those are the rules, obey them and move along now".
And to think that a group who pulls underhanded tactics i the name of free speech would be the ones to personally attempt to stop it when someone else is doing it. Nice insight Moveon
Re:Sooo.... (Score:4, Insightful)
As pointed out elsewhere using a corporation's name is not infringement. Google's policy is obviously a shield against frivolous infringement litigation, but it is stifling criticism of those hiding behind baseless trademark claims. This is a demonstration of just how dangerous Google's position of monopolistic power over information has become.
I would have hoped that a Slashdotter would be more astute in protecting his rights.
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Re: (Score:3)
Now, as far as I know, you are right in that none of the regulations forcing
This is retarded. (Score:4, Insightful)
An organization saw their trademark being used without their permission in an advertisement, and asked that it be taken down.
If this was Microsoft running an ad that said "Ubuntu Linux promotes terrorism," and Ubuntu asked Google to remove it, would you get all angry about how evil Ubuntu and Google are?
Re:This is retarded. (Score:5, Insightful)
Outright defamation is not the same as criticism. Microsoft could and would get sued for that ad, and Google could get sued for it, too.
MoveOn made a political ad criticizing a person by name -- so does that mean it'd be okay to criticize those in MoveOn responsible for the ad, by name, in a rival ad? This is a political thing, and Petraeus, MoveOn is a public figure -- they're fair game in the political world.
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Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
The Collins ad and your example have one critical difference: your example is premised on an untrue statement that would be defamatory to (in this case) the Ubuntu Foundation. The Collins ad may have appropriated the MoveOn name, but it did so based on MoveOn's own actions, in a manner that not only doesn't create marketplace confusion about the MoveOn name, but in fact reinforces that trademark.
I don't think it's appropriate to call shenanigans on Google in this case quite yet,
Re:Wrong (Score:4, Insightful)
If you spend some time without insurance, BTW, you'll find you don't have to be that poor for a medical calamity to wreck your family.
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What about the other ads with trademarks? (Score:4, Interesting)
Does this mean the only reason we see "Wal-mart sucks" ads are because none of those companies PR/legal departments have asked Google to stop using their trademarks?
Re:What about the other ads with trademarks? (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
I think we need to make a distinction between names as a trademark and names as an identifier. It seems trademark [wikipedia.org] protection exists only within the sphere of commerce. So trademark protection should cover use of the trademarked name for identifying products or services. e.g. If you try to advertise a verizonphones.com site or something. Bu
Well (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Actually newsworthy excerpt FTFA (Score:5, Interesting)
So the Times accidentally undercharged them, then gets to call up several weeks later and demand the rest of the money? MoveOn.org should have done what I do in cases like this: Send them a bill for additional handling and paperwork for the sum that they're requesting.
Since when do you get to charge someone one amount, deliver the product, and AFTER the fact say, "By the way, we messed up, and you owe us twice as much?" Is this just a case of liberals not being able to stand their ground again? What the hell is wrong with these people that they can't just say that the transaction has taken place, and there's no remedy? I mean, I understand the NY Times going after the money to protect their journalistic credibility, but MoveOn should've thumbed their nose at them, based solely upon the fact that that's not how business works.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Except that if the whole issue wasn't a mistake at all, but a very common case of illegal financing (charging advocacy groups less is considered a form of financing), then it is not just about mischarging. I'm pretty sure that a MoveOn supporter/member inside the Times managed to get the ad for less
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Actually... they needed to charge for the additional money to avoid violating campaign finance laws (which the NYT was a strong supporter of). Any discount given to a political group, party, or candidate counts as a contribution. Newspapers are forbidden to donate money to political groups, parties, or candidates. The employees of the newspaper can donate (up to maximum contribution limits), but the actual newspaper cannot. What it sounds like happened was that some sales droid offered the discount not
Ah, more Liberal censorship (Score:3, Insightful)
Trademark Reform and Advertising (Score:4, Interesting)
One is tempted to blame google in this situation but I'm not really sure what else they could do. When they have sold keywords that were close to a trademark even when the ad itself contained no trademark they came in for a lot of criticism and even lawsuits. Moreover, I would guess (but can't be sure) that they would be at risk of being sued for trademark infringement if they allowed ads to keep running that were engaging in genuinely misleading usage.
Now you might think that google should just let ads like this one run but not ads that use the trademark for competitive advantage. However, not only would this be difficult and expensive it seems likely that google would be forced to rule on tough close choices not to mention keeping having experts in trademark law from all the countries the ad is going to run in examine the use. It would probably be better at this point for them to make an exception for political speech but this still doesn't solve all the difficulties. A much better solution would be to seek an international treaty on trademarks that lets intermediate companies like google step out of the way and requires any legal action to be brought directly against the advertiser.
It isn't like google is never biased. Their policy (or at least their TOS last time I looked) on what custom buttons for their toolbar they will put into their gallery is pretty bad. It lets you post search buttons for sites that advocate gun control but not for sites that advocate gun possession (presumably like the NRA). Still if they are telling the truth here I don't know if this is really one.
A professional perspective (Score:3, Informative)
So... it's not a conspiracy and it's not a corporate ethics thing, it's just that some people are better at their jobs than others.
This is about Susan Collins (Score:5, Interesting)
Maine is a fairly moderate state, and Collins is in a position very similar to Lincoln Chafee [wikipedia.org] of Rhode Island. That is, in order to appeal to the voters of Maine she has to take reasonably moderate positions. However, in order to maintain her status as a card carrying Republican, she has to appeal to the kooks.
Chafee in trying to appeal to the moderates of Rhode Island, made the kooks in the Republican party angry. So they launched a primary challenger against him in the name of Stephen Laffey. [wikipedia.org] This primary challenger weakened Chafee's position, because it pointed out to independents in the state just how kooky the Republicans have become. So despite years of services, a solid reputation, he lost pretty handidly.
Collins doesn't want the same thing ot happen to her. So to fend off a primary challenge, she's trying to establish her credentials with the kooks. Picking something innocuous that nobody really knows or cares about, she's decided to attack moveon.org. Had she instead decided to champion their latest nutty cause of attacking 12 year olds for speaking in favor of SCHIP [balloon-juice.com], that might have gotten her some negative press back home with regular people and that's not good. So by attacking something the kooks hate, that normal people don't really care about, she's in safe territory.
Just getting the ad out on google.com wouldn't have been enough, because nobody would have paid much attention to it. So it was necessary to place the ad in such a way as to cause it to be rejected. But not too whacko, using bad language would have drawn attention to regular people. So they lucked out on this trademark infringement thing.
Because if there is nothing the kooks love more(left, right, it doesn't matter), it is feeling like they are victims of a giant conspiracy to get them. Plus, it is easier to get the press to pick up on your ad being rejected then it is that it is running and nobody is looking at it.
This news article was intended for right-wing kooks to read, so they'd see Susan Collins as one of their own.
Was the original ad all that offensive? (Score:5, Insightful)
What exactly was so offensive about MoveOn.org's ad campaign [moveon.org] in the first place?
Petraeus has handled the Iraq war poorly, and in several cases lied outright to the American people. MoveOn.org called him out on it. Isn't that how democratic politics and free speech are supposed to work?
It's no secret that many Americans feel that the government misled the general public in order to bolster support for their war, and the ad was a simple reflection of this reality. It wasn't even a baseless personal attack -- they provide quotations, and even cite their sources.
Perhaps the most troubling part of the whole saga is that the house passed a resolution condemning the advert 341-79, and the senate 71-29 (With all 49 republicans, and 22 democrats voting in favor). The president even got in on the action.
This Time editorial [time.com] seems to have the best summation of the whole situation.
Is this all the legislative branch is good for these days? Sternly wagging their fingers at political action groups, and listening to baseball testimony?
Re:Al Gore on the board (Score:5, Insightful)
http://investor.google.com/board.html [google.com]
Both Gore and Schmidt are on Apple's board of directors however: http://www.apple.com/pr/bios/bod.html [apple.com]
Just because you're accusing the search tool of partisan hackery doesn't mean it should stop you before making your own partisan hacked up assaults. Not to mention that Al Gore isn't even involved in this case.
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Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Yeah, whoops. Odd, I thought that's what I wrote but I guess I didn't.
If you think this is the only example of Google's antipathy towards "Red State America", you haven't been paying attention....
I think Google perceives that it can afford to pull these sorts of stunts, or e.g. never making a special page for Memorial or Veterans Day, without significant cost.
A) They can. That's my entire point. Boycotts based on "Culture War" BS never make hardly any sort of impact if a compa