I’ve found something that makes me quite angry, well very angry to be honest, and that is blogger.com’s inadequate dealings and system for copyright infringement complaints.
For larger companies their sytem is probably fine, as the companies have their own system set up to deal with these types of things, but for the single web entrepreneur this is a big hassle and time consuming task, and blogger knows it.
Blogger (blogspot) is probably the internet goldmine of copyrighted materials from all over the web, and they don’t seem to care very much about it. Whilst google and youtube offer email addresses and contact forms to report copyright violations, blogger do not, which is strange don’t you think?
They know that because they have a complicated copyright infringement process (which does not allow email notification) that many webmasters will not pursue the copyright violation, thus saving hundreds of hours in admin work and costs for blogger and google.
What I find irresponsible is that, although blogger is an internet based company, they do not allow copyright infringement complaints via the internet (email), or through a contact form. Using a digital signature this would be easy enough, but as per the reasons above, blogger have not supplied and are not willing to supply a solution for this, however easy it may be, and even if their big brothers have implemented a much easier structure many moons ago.
As long as blogger continues their les es faire attitude towards copyright infringements then it will continue to be known as the tosh-pit of the internet.
Here is the step by step process for Copyright Infringement complaints on blogger.
1. Identify in sufficient detail the copyrighted work that you believe has been infringed upon. This must include identification of specific posts, as opposed to entire sites. Posts must be referenced by either the dates in which they appear or the permalink of the post. For example,
http://example.blogspot.com/archives/2003_01_21_example_archive.html#2104575
2. Identify the material that you claim is infringing upon the copyrighted work listed in item #1 above.
YOU MUST IDENTIFY EACH POST BY PERMALINK OR DATE THAT ALLEGEDLY CONTAINS INFRINGING MATERIAL. The permalink for a post is usually found by clicking on the timestamp of the post.
3. Provide information reasonably sufficient to permit Blogger to contact you (email address is preferred).
4. Include the following statement: “I have a good faith belief that use of the copyrighted materials described above on the allegedly infringing web pages is not authorized by the copyright owner, its agent, or the law.”
5. Include the following statement: “I swear, under penalty of perjury, that the information in the notification is accurate and that I am the copyright owner or am authorized to act on behalf of the owner of an exclusive right that is allegedly infringed.
6. Sign the paper.
7. Send the written communication to the following address:
Google, Inc.
Attn: Blogger Legal Support, DMCA complaints
1600 Amphitheatre Pkwy
Mountain View, CA 94043
OR Fax to:
(650) 618-2680, Attn: Blogger Legal Support, DMCA complaints
cashmaster
The race for the affiliate presidency 2008.
We all know who we back (or don’t) for the USA presidency 2008, but here’s a look at who’s backing who in the affiliate world.
Let’s start with the advertising networks, and firstly ShoppingAds (formerly known as AuctionAds).
ShoppingAds is a part of online solutions company MediaWhiz Holding Inc.. Which in turn is funded by equity management firm Lake Capital. The two founders of Lake Capital are Terry Graunke and Paul Yovovich. Terry Graunke was the founder of Eagle River Interactive which was later sold to the Omnicom Group and turned into Agency.com. Terry is a firm Republican supporter, in fact his whole family is, Terry (or Terrence) donated more than $25,000 dollars to the Republicans in 2004, and for 2008 Terry’s family and relatives have donated more than $10,000 to Mitt Romneys’ campaign. Paul Yovovich seems to be going the same way with him also donating to Romneys’ campaign.
In the Google world, they try to have a ‘neutrality’ about themselves, with their NetPAC committee, supporting anyone who promotes an open and free Internet for their users. But it’s quite clear how Google’s employees feel about things. In 2004 Google staff donated a whopping $207,650 to Democrat candidates in the 2004 elections (although this is way behind the $1.86 million donated by Microsoft employees). The total donated to Democrats from internet business owners and employees during the 2004 campaign was over $13 million dollars.
Amazon hold a similar stance to Google with their Separate Segregated Fund which tries to be as neutral as possible.
Let’s move on to other parts of the affiliate world.
James Zarley, president and CEO of ValueClick Inc., the company behind Commission Junction, seems to be another Republican supporter, donating to Republican causes in the past, but as yet has not made a donation to any front runner in 2008’s race.
Affiliate marketer, co-founder of Affiliate Summit and AffiliateTip blogger, Shawn Collins seems to be a Republican man too, donating a small amount to Rudy Giuliani’s presidential committee earlier in 2007. Another Republican man is AffiliateCrew’s President Peter Harrison who made a nice sized donation to Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign also.
So it seems the men behind affiliates are rooting for Romney in 2008, whilst the people below them maybe don’t share the same the same views as the men at the top.
cashmaster
The History of Affiliate Programs,
The question of where the first affiliate program was started is an interesting tale of deceit and murder, well maybe not the latter but you get my drift.
Amazon’s Jeff Bezos claimed for many years that Amazon was the creator of the first Affiliate Program in 1996, but this is just a myth, yes they probably were the creators of the first large scale affiliate program, but there were many smaller, but workable affiliate schemes in place long before the Amazon program was around.
It’s interesting to note that in more recent years the claim to have “invented” the Affiliate Program has been changed to a more subtle “As one of the first online affiliate marketing programs”. At last they repented.
The fact is there were other affiliate style programs around before Amazons’ - Some as early as 1994, some say the first was CDNow, with PC Flowers and Gifts launching in the same year, quite a number of other programs appeared before the date of the Amazon launch, many within the adult side of the internet.
Nobody is really sure what was the first affiliate program around, as sites and businesses come and go, and so do people, information is lost, and we don’t know how we began. One thing is for sure though - It ain’t Amazon.
cashmaster
The history of Affiliate Networks is a messy and complicated business, with claims of this, lies of the other flying around all over the place.
So let’s begin.
The first real affiliate network was LinkShare, still going strong today, who created the concept and launched their affiliate network in 1996. Stephen Messer can take some of the credit for this. In the same year Be Free started their own small network, which was later acquired by ValueClick in 2002.
dgmAffiliates claims to be the first UK based affiliate network, starting up in 1999. Although UK based affiliate management came much earlier with Azam, launched in 1997.
There are many other firsts flying around, Buy.at the first to introduce RSS feeds to affiliates. Linkshare, the first to introduce a Loyalty Club, and CJ, the first to blow everybody else out of the water and still manage to mess up.
cashmaster
The History of Affiliate Programs Directories,
As history research goes, this is an easy one.
It’s well documented that the now Internet.com (JupiterWeb) owned Refer-it was the first Affiliate program search engine that was launched in 1997. A few months later Allan Gardyne set up an affiliate directory AssociatePrograms, that’s still alive and going strong today.
Another important milestone in Affiliate program directories was the launch of 2-tier in 1998, this site specifically for sites with 2 levels of commission.
Since that time there have been numerous additions to the Affiliate Program Directory list, including Affiliate Programs Cash. Some come and go, some are half finished, some are dormant, and some are no longer maintained. But you can be sure, This one will be around for a long time yet.
cashmaster
I’ve been playing around various pagerank checking sites for the last 6 hours and found that pagerank is completely dead.
Every site is showing a PR of 0, including Google itself.
Now I’ve heard of PR being unreachable for maybe 1 or 2 hours in the past, mainly during updates. But 6 hours does seem like a long stretch to me.
Does this mean that Google is again altering the last PR update for the 2nd time? Let’s see what the result of this change is. Fingers crossed it’s for the better X.
cashmaster
The A4U Awards were held in the last couple of weeks, in the Fox ExCeL, London. here is an update of the awards that were given.
A4U Awards - A4UExpo
Merchant Awards -
Publisher Choice of Merchant 2007: PrezzyBox
Innovation in Affiliate Marketing: Merchant Award – Amazon
Publishers Manager of 2007: Merchant Award – Zak Edwards from PrezzyBox
Best New Merchant of 2007: Next
Publisher Awards -
Innovation in Affiliate Marketing: Publishers Award – eConversions
Best International Publisher: eConversions
Merchants Publisher of the Year 2007: UK Web Media
Best New Affiliate of 2007: Dealpond
Affiliate Network Awards -
Publisher Choice of Network 2007: Affiliate Window
Innovation in Affiliate Marketing: Network Award – Affiliate Window
Individual Awards -
Affiliate Marketing Blog of 2007: Kieron Donoghue
Best Account Manager 2007: Hero Grigoraki
Industry Champion Award 2007: Matthew Wood
Agency Awards -
Publisher Choice of Agency 2007: Existem-am
Well done to all those concerned - and to A4U - the event was exceptional, a very good job all round.
cashmaster
After successful negotiations with advertisers in the previous weeks, we here at affiliate programs cash can confirm that over 1,000 extra programs will be added to the Affiliate Programs Cash main directory in the near future. Nearly every niche imaginable will be available for your affiliate program needs. These large additions will take approximately 4-6 weeks to complete it is predicted, but hopefully by that time we will have news of further successful negotiations.
We hope you find what you’re looking for in what we aim to be the biggest online directory of affiliate programs.
cashmaster
This has been going on for a while I know, but the Valueclick Inc situation doesn’t seem to be getting any better.
Valueclick (traded as VCLK - NASDAQ), the parent company of commission junction, has some trouble. Apart from shares falling 40% since may of 2007, failed takeover news, and having a Federal Trade Commission investigation concerning issues related to the FTC Act and the CAN-SPAM Act pending, have had numerous securities fraud class action lawsuits filed against them related to allegations of “issuing false and misleading statements concerning ValueClick’s sales growth, record reported revenues and earnings, strong business fundamentals and upward earnings guidance” concerning persons who bought ValueClick stock between Nov. 1, 2006 and July 27, 2007.
In the lawsuit’s there are allegations of violations of federal securities laws, including allegations of VCLK issuing a series of material misrepresentations to the market which had the effect of artificially inflating the market price.
I’m going to keep up with this story as it will be interesting to see what happens (if anything) with the individual and group lawsuits as well as the investigation. It seems to have been kept relatively quiet up until now, let’s wait and see …
