RE: While we're talking about the 1st amendment...

["Larry Seltzer" <Larry () larryseltzer com>]

Google responds. It's official: MoveOn.org is using Google's trademark
policy to surpress criticism of them. 
 
Larry Seltzer
eWEEK.com Security Center Editor
http://security.eweek.com/ <blocked::http://security.eweek.com/> 
http://blogs.eweek.com/cheap_hack/
<http://blog.eweek.com/blogs/larry_seltzer/>
<http://blog.ziffdavis.com/seltzer> 
Contributing Editor, PC Magazine
larry.seltzer () ziffdavisenterprise com
 
http://googlepublicpolicy.blogspot.com/2007/10/our-advertising-policies-
and-political.html

Our advertising policies and political speech
<http://googlepublicpolicy.blogspot.com/2007/10/our-advertising-policies
-and-political.html>  


Friday, October 12, 2007 at 4:23 PM 

Posted by Pablo Chavez, Policy Counsel



A recent article
<http://www.examiner.com/a-983100~Google_bans_anti_MoveOn_org_ads.html>
about our treatment of a political ad placed on Google suggested that we
make decisions about advertising content based on the political
viewpoint of the advertiser and the ad. This is simply untrue. We do not
accept or reject ads based on the political opinions expressed in the
ads or the political views of the advertiser.


Let me explain the facts behind the matter and the policy behind the
decision.

Recently, representatives of Senator Susan Collins' Senate re-election
campaign tried to place an ad on Google that included a reference to
MoveOn.org, a political group. The text of this ad was rejected by our
system because of our trademark policy, not because of its political
content. 


Under our trademark policy
<http://www.google.com/tm_complaint_adwords.html> , a registered
trademark owner may request that its mark not be used in the text of
other parties' ads. Some time ago, MoveOn.org submitted a request to
Google that its trademark not be used in any ads, and as a result our
advertiser support team offered instructions on how Senator Collins'
campaign could edit and resubmit its ad.


Any company or organization -- regardless of political affiliation --
could do what MoveOn did and thereby prevent advertisers from running
ads that include their trademarks in ad texts. And that's very
important. The ad in question could have said that MoveOn.org was great,
or even just so-so, and our policy would have resulted in the same
outcome; Google would have asked the advertiser to drop the trademarked
phrase.


Our trademark policy is considered one of the least restrictive in the
industry. It strikes a balance among the interests of users,
advertisers, and trademark owners by leaving it up to trademark owners
to notify us of restrictions on their registered trademarks. Any entity
that demonstrates to us that it owns trademark rights can request that
its trademarked terms not be used in the text of Google ads.



Finally, it was claimed
<http://www.examiner.com/a-983100~Google_bans_anti_MoveOn_org_ads.html>
that "Google routinely permits the unauthorized use of [other] company
names...in advocacy ads." In fact, if ads are running on Google that
include trademark terms in their text, either the trademark owner has
not submitted a complaint, or the advertiser has been authorized to use
the trademark. 

We are committed to fairness and freedom of expression, and we recognize
that the nature of political advertising is to inspire debate. We look
forward to engaging in this debate in an open and transparent fashion,
and we encourage political candidates and campaigns to contact our
elections team <mailto:elections () google com>  with any questions they
may have about our policies.

 
<http://www.blogger.com/post-edit.g?blogID=6479491108286515994&postID=47
69291497327091772> 

Labels: Free Expression
<http://googlepublicpolicy.blogspot.com/search/label/Free%20Expression>
, Politics
<http://googlepublicpolicy.blogspot.com/search/label/Politics>  

_______________________________________________
Fun and Misc security discussion for OT posts.
https://linuxbox.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/funsec
Note: funsec is a public and open mailing list.