Google's Ban of an Anti-MoveOn.org Ad

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.

Re:Do no evil? Republicans are evil

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh yes, and the current system of extraordinary rendition appeared under Clinton. And don't forget that pesky DMCA.

It's not that I like the GOP either - I just think the donkeys, elephants and Googles of this world are all in it for three things: the money, the power, and the women.

using a trademark <> infringing a trademark

[sed quid in infernos]

There are many examples of using another's trademark in an ad that do not amount to trademark infringement. The nominative use [harvard.edu] exception allows use of another's trademark to refer to the trademark owner's product or the trademark owner itself when:

[f]irst, the product or service in question must be one not readily identifiable without use of the trademark; second, only so much of the mark or marks may be used as is reasonably necessary to identify the product or service; and third, the user must do nothing that would, in conjunction with the mark, suggest sponsorship or endorsement by the trademark holder.

Based on the contents of the ad reproduced in TFA, this ad could easily qualify for the nominative use exception. The determination couldn't be final without looking at the whole ad itself, but the snippets in the article seem to be right in line with these requirements. Certainly, Google has the right to implement any trademark policy it wants. But their policy causes them to reject many ads that are not infringing on others' trademarks. The same policy would stop ads that described the wrongdoing of any organization that has trademark rights in its name (as most organizations that deal with the public do).

Wrong

[G Fab]

It's a judgment call since Google can do whatever the hell it wants, but there was no trademark violation.

Showing the actions of Moveon in order to criticize them is fair use. There is no question that this ad was not illegal.

Google is liberal. There's nothing wrong with that, but it's obvious. They filter information in a biased way, too. If you look at the fringe sites they allow onto google news, its matches their political views. No right wing nuts, plenty of left wing nuts.

Again, I don't have a problem with google choosing to be biased, but they do.

And maybe they give all trademark complaints instant credit, but I seriously doubt it. This was an invalid complaint and there was no legal reason to pull the ad.

Re:Sooo....

[larry bagina]

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.

Re:Actually newsworthy excerpt FTFA

[gregorio]

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.

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 than usual and later someone found out about it, mostly because the ad was controversial.

It's pretty hard to legitemately mischarge this kind of service. I consider it to be pretty obvious that someone managed to get stuff for less and when they got busted, they had to charge the remaining sum.

Re:Actually newsworthy excerpt FTFA

[Nephilium]

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 fully understanding the ramifications...

Nephilium

Re:Sooo....

[raehl]

Either way, if their trademark use policy doesn't allow for nominative use, it's faulty and needs to be fixed.

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.

Re:What about the other ads with trademarks?

[Solandri]

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?

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. But for advertising to spread criticism or rebuttal, it's being used solely as an identifier and not for commerce, and thus is not trademark infringement. So a site like verizonsucks.com should be able to advertise themselves as long as they are not selling products or services in direct competition with Verizon.

A professional perspective

[ArikTheRed]

OK - I deal with Google ads (and MSN, etc) for a living. The fact is - Google has very strict policies - but not every account manager at Google is equal (what... you think these ads aren't manually managed?). Some are very paranoid, and will shut down anything with a single complaint, others will spend more time and look into it, and a few won't act until they have gotten multiple complaints or even threatened with lawsuits. Also, the size of the account plays into how lenient they are as well. If you are bidding on a million keywords they'll tend to let things slide, as opposed to someone who bids on 10 or 20.

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.

Re:Wrong

[OakDragon]

Quick example: rejecting health care for poor children. That's pretty evil.

I could say, "but that's not what happened." But one time I said that and was criticized for a "straw man" attack.

So I'm going to say: "Do you have a specific example in mind?"

Re:Wrong

[sumdumass]

Poor children have health care. If for some reason you actually think they don't then you just aren't paying attention.

Actually, there is only a small percent of people in the US that don't have health care that could otherwise have it. I was recently on a boat with some people partying and we started discussing this health care crisis. One guy told us a story about his cousin having some disease that she was born with and they have to pay for the medication out out of their pocket. They can't get insurance coverage on her because it is an existing condition and so on. Then I realized that this cousin's parents where the owners of the $45,000 boat we were sitting in, It was their loaded escalade sitting right next to lincon mark LT that we used to pull the boat with. They live in a $350,000 house sitting on 20 acres of lightly wooded land. and think that the government should pay the medical expenses of their kids. I guess maybe they could afford a bigger boat then. This is the state of health care in the US. When they say poor, they don't mean financially poor, they mean "Ah, you poor little baby" poor.

Re:Sooo....

[Torvaun]

Lindows was going to win, but eventually settled under the threat of being sued in every country where Lindows and Microsoft both had a presence. Lindows got some money, and switched to Linspire.

Re:Wrong

[Anonymous Coward]

Just because this is your personal experiance doesn't mean you can apply it universally to everyone in America. I personally have known many "poor children" who really don't have any health care. paying hundreds of dollars every week for medication instead of being able to buy school supplies. I would also like to see a source citing that "there is only a small percent of people in the US that don't have health care that could otherwise have it."
So just becuase you know some rich bastards trying to game the system doesn't mean that everyone is, some people truely need the help.

Re:Sooo....

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh, this is just a case of Google doing what it damn well pleases. They're showing their true colors and bias.

Oh Yeah? Where were you when Google was getting sued over people taking out ads in searches for their competitors names and put this policy in effect in order to deal with the problem? What are your true colors and biases?

Re:Sooo....

[rs79]

" "If I was in charge of the response from Google's policy counsel, I would've just said that the antimoveon ads are being placed by fucking tools, moreso than moveon folks themselves, and I don't want their advertising dollars"

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.

Re:Sooo....

[GPL Apostate]

In case you're wondering*, neo-conservative is the label properly applied to only a small but loud segment of the conservative political movement. Namely, neo-conservatives are former leftists who've jumped sides and now are loud critics of the left/liberal political sphere. An example of a prominent neo-conservative would be David Horowitz, a former red-diaper child who was a prominent member of the New Left in the sixties.

There aren't that many neo-cons out there. Many people within the conservative sphere have held conservative views their entire life.

(*I know you're not wondering. You just slapped a label on something 'bad' and don't have to consider who they are at all. You've constructed your parody opponent and by golly, you're sticking it to 'em!)

Re:Sooo....

[background image]

I live in the United States, a country that was NEVER intended to be a democracy.

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?):

However, there are distinctions between the terms "republic" and "democracy," as the latter retains many of the same qualities of a republic, yet adheres to no distinct political order or set of laws. Therefore by its original understanding, "democracy" could be qualified as anything from representative governance to individual and mob rule. And in this sense the word "democracy" is often used too lightly and erroneously to mean "republic."

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.

Re:using a trademark infringing a trademark

[sonamchauhan]

from the article:

An anti-war ad currently running on Google asks "Keep Blackwater in Iraq?" and links to an article titled "Bastards at Blackwater -- Should Blackwater Security be held accountable for the deaths of its employees?"

Google is being hypocritical.