Google's Ban of an Anti-MoveOn.org Ad 476
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.
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?
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:Actually newsworthy excerpt FTFA (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:This is retarded. (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, but MoveOn got caught with their hand in the cookie jar again. This case is pretty much the same as Evil Corporation filing a lawsuit against {evilcorporation}sucks.com, except using Google as the heavy instead of the judicial system. Oh, and except that people are suddenly unable to see around their political views to get at the heart of the matter, which is that there was no trademark infringement taking place here.
Re:What about the other ads with trademarks? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Al Gore on the board (Score:2, Interesting)
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.
Re:Sooo.... (Score:3, Interesting)
This is how politics work or doesn't work as the case may be.
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.
Re:Sooo.... (Score:3, Interesting)
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.
Re:Sooo.... (Score:2, Interesting)
Except in this case, their name _was_ the trademark in question. MoveOn.org has both "MoveOn.org" and "MoveOn" trademarked, if I did my quick search at the trademark's page correctly. This rules out almost any ability to criticize them. Even this story here on
I don't really think Google did this for political reasons, but this is clearly not a good thing.
Re:Was the original ad all that offensive? (Score:1, Interesting)
I am not sure why you think Gen. Petraeus has run the Irag war poorly as he has only been running it since January of this year. The media named "surge" is not just an increase in US troops, it is being waged with a change tactics, and a strategy to truly knock down Al Qaeda in Iraq so that some sort of political solution can take hold. Even the NY Times has reported that has made progress.
If you follow the actual bloggers who are in Irag, they are reporting it like they see it. Several of them have reported good and bad things that have happened. They have found a lot of postive results since the summer offensive kicked off last June. Here are links to three of them of have spent a lot of time in Iraq.
http://www.michaelyon-online.com/ [michaelyon-online.com] ( Look for dispatches who probably has spent more time in Irag than anybody else)
http://www.longwarjournal.org/ [longwarjournal.org] (Bill Roggio and now other in the field bloggers reporting on Iraq and Afghanistan)
http://www.michaeltotten.com/ [michaeltotten.com]
Re:Was the original ad all that offensive? (Score:2, Interesting)
Like what the right wing does on a constant basis?
It was also published before he even gave his report to Congress, so how could they know he was lying.
Because we already knew what he was going to say. What he had been saying for years: "we are making progress in Iraq" even though the splurge had failed by Bush's own benchmarks.
Having listened to his report and read it as well, it was pretty clear that he was being honest about what was and was not working.
Bull fucking shit. Car bombs and getting shot in the face (as opposed to the back of the head) aren't sectarian violence? Go up to an American family that has lost a soldier in Iraq and try telling them their son's death didn't count because he was shot in the face or killed by a car bomb.
The media named "surge"
Um, no. "Surge" is the Republican marketing term for the escalation. They don't call it an escalation because then the lazy press might compare it to all the other escalations in troop levels, and notice that these half-measures only end up with more American casualties and zero progress in Iraq.
The MoveOn.Org ad was highly offensive.
Max Cleland, John Kerry, Valerie Wilson, John Murtha, "phony soldiers", and just about any general that has criticized the Bush administration. Where was the right wings outrage then, eh?
Re:Sooo.... (Score:2, Interesting)
The concern here is not whether Google infringed someone's Free Speech rights, but whether by their action they might attract the attention of an overzealous Congress to extend McCain-Feingold or the possible reinstatement of the Fairness Doctrine to the internet. That would not be a good thing.