The Canadian government has imposed a limit on Parliamentary debate for Bill C-11: The Copyright Modernization Act which will completely change the way that Canadians interact with web content.
While the bill’s proponents state that there are many benefits to the act, opponents state that the bill’s “digital lock” provisions are excessively restrictive and feel that they are the result of increasing pressure from US corporations.
Opponents state that these provisions will lock down content that has previously been available to consumers and must be immediately revised. In effect Canadians will not have the right to take material they purchase (music, movies etc) and transfer it onto different devices. If the proposed bill passes without amendment, any circumvention would be a crime; regardless if you have legally purchased the material you want to view on another platform.
The Stephen Harper conservative government has decided to defeat all proposed amendments to the bill from the Liberal and NDP parties. The Speaker of the House has selected 18 proposed amendments from Green Party Leader Elizabeth May for debate in the House of Commons.
In an email newsletter sent to constituents and in a video release, May contends that this is Canadians last chance to make any changes to the act:
“These amendments represent sensible changes that will ensure this bill does in fact modernize our copyright law, rather than unfairly undermine our rights as consumers – They will remove digital lock provisions and allow for exceptions, while addressing creators’ concerns about the possible effects of the addition of ‘education’ to the list of fair dealing categories.”
The Liberal party has also launched a petition calling for amendments to Bill C-11’s digital lock rules which would make it illegal to copy a DVD so that you can watch it on your tablet device even if you are not infringing on the copyright.
They also state that “If the Bill passes without amendment, any circumvention will become a crime, even if it is only done to enjoy material you have legally purchased on the platform you want to view it on.”
Following in the footfalls of the SOPA and PIPA controversies the ongoing debate for a fair and equitable balance between the copyright infringement and legitimate fair public usage is far from being resolved.
The Star Wars saga continues to grow in popularity with the increasing May the Fourth be with You/Star Wars Appreciation Day. This unofficial day of recognition for anything Star Wars has grown from a meager recognition but has been given a ‘faster than the Millennium Falcon making the Kessel run in less than twelve parsecs’ boost in popularity mainly due to SEO’s.
Search Engine Land has put together a great <a href="http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2069098/May-the-Fourth-Be-With-You-SEWs-Favorite-Star-Wars-Parodies
” target=”_blank” rel=”nofollow”>blog article about the role that SEOs have had in the rise in popularity of Star Wars Day. The growth in popularity of the internet meme that propagated the Star Wars Day phenomenon, speaks to the multitudes of youngling Padawans that grew up with the Star Wars movies (the original episodes 4,5,6…not episodes 1,2,3).
I take great personal pride that the first movie I watched in a theatre was Star Wars. I was immediately hooked. From the fly through opening text, to Chewbacca’s growl at the end of the award ceremony! Needless to say I dressed up as Luke Skywalker that year for Halloween. Buy why should we stop there? I think an internet community, we can encourage the spread of Star Wars Day phenomena and have people dress up for the May the Fourth date next year in appropriate star wars garb! Who’s with me? (pics to follow next year 
. Maybe a flash mob of stormtroopers and/or Jedi?
In very much the same way, Beanstalk SEO is akin to the Rebel Alliance. We are a last bastion of white-hat SEOs trying to work within the confines of the Google Empire while staving off a constant barrage from the black-hat forces of scum and villany seeking to bring ruin to our peaceful Alderaan of search results. (ok, the metaphor was a stretch, but just go with it…)
Remember: Don’t give into hate. Do not turn to the Dark Side as Vader did. Complete your training and become an effective SEO Jedi worthy of a seat on the White-Hat SEO Jedi Council. Many Bothans died to bring you this message….
Have fun with this soundboard from starwars.com
See the rest here:
May the Fourth Be With You / Star Wars Appreciation Day and the SEO Connection
We all make New Year’s resolutions – some are personal, some are business or professional in nature. Even if we don’t actually make New Year’s resolutions, we engage in formal and informal “planning” as we look ahead to the new year.
If you operate a website, you’re probably aware that your website operations are now highly regulated. And the pace of legal regulations continues to accelerate.
Which means that you face an increasing risk of legal liability.
So, it’s a good idea to give your website a legal check-up and to update your site before it’s too late.
General Issue Checklist
The general checklist below covers issues that are not new issues which arose in 2009. These issues have been around for a while, but some may be new to you, particularly if your website or marketing activities changed recently.
- Copyright Notice. These are the basic elements of a copyright notice: the word “copyright” or copyright symbol (c in a circle) followed by the year of first publication followed by the name of the copyright owner followed by “All rights reserved worldwide.” Here’s an example taken from my digicontracts.com website: Copyright 1996-2010 Digital Contracts, Inc. All rights reserved worldwide.
- Blogs. If you’ve recently added a blog to your site, or if your site is a blog site, it’s possible that a visitor could post infringing materials (e.g. text, video links, images). Under the strict principles of copyright law, you’d be a copyright infringer even if you were unaware of the posting. Your liability could be significant. The Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) provides a “safe harbor” from liability provided you publish a DMCA notice and register with the Copyright Office.
- Collection, Use and Sharing of Personal Information. Your marketing activities determine the categories of personal information you collect, how you use it, and how you share it. As you evolve your marketing practices over time, it’s easy to forget that your Privacy Policy should reflect your actual practices regarding personal information. This is one area in which most online marketers are the most vulnerable to legal liability. So, review carefully your present and anticipated future marketing activities that include personal information and update your Privacy Policy accordingly.
- Data Security. Technology and security practices are in a continual state of evolution. You’re required to implement and maintain “reasonable and appropriate” data security measures, according to the Federal Trade Commission (FTC). If your site does not actually implement up-to-date measures, you should update them immediately.
- Service Providers. Do your outsourced service providers – hosting, SEO, website development, etc. – have access to the internals of your website server and your databases that archive personal information? If so, according to the FTC, you need to enter into simple confidentiality agreements with these service providers.
- Human Intervention in Online Contracting. Two 2008 cases highlighted the fact that human intervention in online contracting may be a recipe for creating unenforceable agreements. The recipe for enforceable online agreements is well settled, but if you add intervention by your employees into the acceptance process, your online agreement may end up becoming unenforceable.
Emerging Issue Checklist
The emerging issue checklist below covers issues that were new in 2009 or experienced relatively significant new developments in 2009.
- Keyword-Triggered Ads. The issue is familiar: Whether pay-per-click advertisers should be permitted to use keywords that are also competitor’s trademarks for purposes of triggering the advertisers’ ads on a search results page. This issue continued to be hotly litigated in 2009 without ultimate resolution due to a split among various Circuit Courts of Appeals. However, a 2nd Circuit ruling in 2009 narrowed the split in favor of trademark owners. Congress may resolve the split with specific legislation in 2010.
- Behavioral Ads. Behavioral ads are highly relevant to consumers because they are based on consumers’ online behavior, including data tracked regarding sites visited, length of visits, content read, and searches made. In February 2009, the FTC issued a staff report entitled “Self-Regulatory Principles For Online Behavioral Advertising”. This report set out certain principles for purposes of protecting consumer privacy. Later, Google issued a notice that “interest-based” advertising utilized in its AdSense program required a modification to the Privacy Policies of all participants in the AdSense program. Look for congressional action on behavioral advertising in 2010.
- Red Flag Identity Theft Policy. 2009 saw deadlines for establishing a Red Flag Identity Theft Policy come and go. Extensions of the deadline were ordered by the FTC due to confusion over the scope of the regulations and who is covered. The current deadline is June 1, 2010. In simple terms, if your registered users make periodic payments payable as monthly or quarterly installments, or if you extend credit so that payment is made after receipt of the product or service, you’re covered by the regulations, and you should implement a policy.
- False Advertising. In July 2009, the Attorney General for New York reached a settlement with a cosmetic surgery company over the company’s fake positive consumer reviews on the Web. The company ordered its employees to pose as customers and to write flattering reviews. The Company agreed to pay $300,000 in penalties.
- FTC Guides. Concerned over false advertising on the Web (including the type of behavior discussed in the False Advertising point above), the FTC issued new Guides explaining how they will interpret existing law regarding endorsements and testimonials used in online advertising. if you recruit affiliates, resellers, or bloggers to promote your offering, you’d be classified as an “Advertiser” under the Guides, and if you’re recruited as an affiliate, reseller, or blogger to pitch the products of others, you’d be classified as an “Endorser” under the Guides. In simple terms, Advertisers are required to provide guidance and training to their Endorsers regarding the Guides or face liability. Endorsers are required to disclose material connections with their sponsoring Advertisers including receipt of compensation of any kind. Drafting and posting a Disclosure Policy is the key to compliance for Endorsers in order to avoid a fine of up to $11,000.
What to do if You’re Developing a New Website
If you’re developing a new website (or heaven forbid, if you have an existing website that has yet to incorporate website compliance documents), your website should incorporate some combination of the following documents:
- FTC Guides Disclosure Policy
- Legal Page
- Terms of Use
- DMCA Registration Form
- Privacy Policy
- Service Provider Privacy-Security Agreement
- Customer Agreement (click-wrapped SaaS, Membership, Subscription, Account Agreement)
- Red Flag Identity Theft Policy
Conclusion
The checklists in this article are not exhaustive; however, they should be a good start to a comprehensive legal check-up for your website as you move into 2010.
It’s not the “wild, wild west” atmosphere on the Web anymore. Legal compliance is essential if you want to avoid liability in a highly regulated environment.
This article is provided for educational and informative purposes only. This information does not constitute legal advice, and should not be construed as such.
Leading Internet, IP and software lawyer Chip Cooper has automated the process of drafting website legal compliance documents with his MyLegalFirewall website documents drafting service. Use his free online tool Website Documents Determinator to quickly determine which documents your website really needs. And grab your 3 complimentary Special Reports.
Post from: SiteProNews: Webmaster News & Resources
Squidoo was a term from the 20′ and 30’s I think, and it was a slang phrase for “Get out while the gettin’s good.” Nope… that’s 23 skidoo! My mistake.
So then I looked it up in Wikipedia and this is their words exactly… “Squidoo is a community website that allows users to create pages (called lenses) for subjects of interest. Squidoo is in the top 500 most visited sites in the world, and in the top 300 most viewed in the United States.[1] Squidoo grew 91% in 2008, and had 900,000 handbuilt lenses as of February 1st, 2009.
Wow! 900,000 websites! Just on Squidoo! It boggles the mind.
But here is how it can work for you. This coming from the perspective of an online marketer AND a traffic hog. The more the better…almost, but I’d rather have good quality traffic than just big traffic.
First, when you get to Squidoo, you get a domain name AND a website hosted at that URL. Squids, who are just people who use Squidoo, refer to their their websites as “lenses.” Maybe it comes from being able to view a slice of the world through one of their lenses.
But a FREE domain name and website! And they make it easy.
That clears up a big hurdle that folks who want to earn money online face in the beginning.
One method by which small online marketers get the right people to their sites is by selecting a keyword that they can rank for. The keyword also has to be highly relevant to the content of their site.
So, say you had a good supplier of umbrellas and you wanted to make some affiliate sales for them.
You need a keyword that will let you into the market.
I checked “umbrellas” as a keyword except that the word is too broad and will have high competition and low quality of traffic.
I went to Google this is what I typed in… site: squidoo “umbrellas” and got Results 1 – 9 of about 11,700 for site: squidoo “umbrellas”. Way too broad! Plus I can’t compete! Good grief! There are 11,000 “umbrella” squidoo competitors. Give or take a thousand.
Why is that so important? Well, it’s more important than it would be if you had a free standing, self hosted site simply because Google will only show ONE Squidoo result most times and occasionally two on a page of ten search results.
So I went to Google this is what I typed in… site: squidoo “rain umbrellas” and got Results 1 – 10 of about 101 for site: squidoo “rain umbrellas”. Wow!
That’s a fine example of a “low competition” keyword. That’s just may way of saying not too much competition.
Now, go get a Squidoo site with rain-umbrellas first in the domain name and you are ready to to go. IF you have an umbrella supplier.
Now, go ahead and fill your site with all things rain umbrellas and do what it takes to get indexed by Google. This is imprtant because if you are not indexed Google WON”T show your site!
So what does all this show us?
It shows you where to get a website and domain name free.
It shows you how to pick a Squidoo lens domain name so that you will have a really good shot at Google showing YOUR offer up on Page One.
Page One on Google translates into traffic.
I think you can take it from here fairly easily.
Riley West – Squidoo Lenses can easily get traffic to your offers! And it’s quality traffic too. Use the information in this article AND in the FREE EBOOK at Make Money With Squidoo. Start now, get some commissions coming in. You can do this!
Post from: SiteProNews: Webmaster News & Resources