Today,  

Last month I posted about Barnes & Nobles tedious process for unsubscribing from their email newsletters. It was so complex that I honestly coudn’t even figure out why I was receiving emails to begin with. By all appearances I was not subscribed to anything. This was confirmed after a couple of submissions to tech support, they also told me that I had already unsubscribed. Phew!

But then today, guess what lands in my inbox? Too easy, huh? It was yet another email newsletter from our friends at B&N.com.

My first thought was, “Here we go again.” I quickly scroll to the bottom of the page and find the so-called unsubscribe links:

How to unsubscribe:This message was sent to stoney@polepositionweb.com on October 9, 2007. If you no longer wish to receive promotional email from Barnes & Noble, please click here [link removed]. If you have a Barnes&Noble.com account, you can also log in [link removed] to your account and follow the instructions under Change Your Communications Preferences.

I didn’t notice if that was any different than the message at the bottom of all their other emails so I simply hit the “click here” link. You could say I was surprised when I was taken to this screen:



Could it really be this easy? I mean, yeah, it should be this easy, but it was so haaaaard before! Sure enough, one click and I’m told that I’m unsubscribed:



Though 10 days does seem long a long time to be removed from the list. That should be automatic. But still, I’m impressed.

So, just for fun I wanted to see what the process was like by logging in. I clicked the “log in” link in the email and was brought here:



Well, this is new. I logged in and was taken to an account screen. I quickly found the “Communication Preferences” area that gave me a couple of options:

• Change Your Communications Preferences
• Change Your Keep Me Posted! Newsletters and Alerts

The first option sent me to a page that le’s me change if or how I want to be communicated with. Notice the yes/no options about receiving any kind of communications at all. By default my options were yes and well, contact me any way you can. Not what I expected to see after unsubscribing, but they did say it would take ten days!



The real disappointment set in when I click the link to change my “Keep me Posted” options. As you can see below this is the same sorry “we’ll email you a link” scenario that I came across before.



Barnes & Noble needs to take a lesson from itself. All communication options should have a two-click (or less) unsubscribe option. But for now, I’m just happy they got it half right.

(Link)

Admin wrote: ”In the next few days, we’re going to introduce several hundred Neighborhoods that cover a wide variety of interests. We’ll be adding more as time goes on.”
(Link)

Admin wrote: 

Pulling a lawyer out of your pocket isn’t necessarily the best way to deal with an angry blogger, and businesses should know that. If anything, it makes the blogger’s target look like that much more of a jerk.

In David-and-Goliath stories, the Davids always come out looking innocent, even if they’re not.

Online criticism is a consequence of the new world that blogs have created and many businesses aren’t handling it well. Often they take a PR molehill and turn it into a mountain by threatening and attempting to silence critics.

Perhaps it’s because companies have traditionally turned to their lawyers to fight for them. But typically those lawyers are fighting against other lawyers representing other companies – Goliath versus Goliath battles.

When faced with a cease-and-desist order, though, bloggers often post it as further evidence against their opponent, and tend to rally the blogosphere behind them during the fight. What was a pebble looses a boulder of bad PR.

So how do you handle a blogger with a vendetta? Here are seven ideas:

1. No lawyers – Legal action is your last resort. Legal orders challenge the sovereignty that causes them to blog in the first place – the ability to say and publish whatever they want. A cease-and-desist letter can make you look like a bully.

2. Keep it personable — See if you can deal with the blogger directly, politely, respecting his or her viewpoints. Plead your case and ask if they’ll reconsider their position. This can be done in the comments section. Often they’re too hot-headed to listen, but sometimes they do.

3. Don’t escalate the debate – Chances are the blogger’s not an A-lister with the power to rally the troops and make a mess of it that could last up to a week (short lived in the blogosphere, not so much in the search results). Judge whether or not anyone will notice and then decide if it’s worth a fight (or carefully worded discussion).

4. Crank up the Spin Machine – This doesn’t mean blow smoke at your assailant. While you’re negotiating, feed some positive tips to A-listers, newspapers, and online publications in the hopes that some will cover it and outweigh the negative.

5. Join the discussion – State your case in the comments. Be cordial, respectful, dispassionate. Be transparent by making it clear who you are – the last thing you want is some detective IP tracking that links your company to an asinine remark or fake identity. Avoid legalese and public relations shtick (everybody hates that).

6. Remind of unintended consequences – This may only apply to disgruntled former employee bloggers. Remind the blogger that potential employers (or other entities) may google their name. If it appears that the blogger is a professional liability for what they may say, then they may be passed over. Here’s a good guide to handling former employees.

7. The Last Resort – If a lawyer is necessary (if it comes to libel or breach of contract or leaked secrets, etc.), expect that the blogger will post any correspondence from the legal department, especially if the message appears to be an attempt to silence them. Recently, cease-and-desist letters have come with questionable claims to copyright of the letter itself, threatening action if the text of the letter is published. This is just begging to blow up into something newsworthy, so use your lawyers wisely.

Blogging PR damage control

(Link)

Admin wrote: ”Using Google’s AdWords with dynamic keywords has often been a challenge for the new advertiser. With this explanation, using dynamic keywords should now be easy.”
(Link)

Admin wrote: 

Do domainers know where to draw the line? “There is no question that the TM laws and how they are applied online are NOT consistent with the decision making for offline enterprise.

Someday there will be hundreds of reversals as domains taken wrongly from domainers that were not actually violating a trademark.

Then we have a separate issue as it is Google and Yahoo that actually traffic and make all this profitable whether right or wrong, violation or not. There are a lot of moving parts to all this and not everything is obvious. There are nuances that can be legally exploited. The thinking has yet to catch up with the technology. Some of the issues are so gray that one could argue on either side for or against. This panel will let it all hang out. A heated debate from all sides will be the result.”

Jeremiah Johnston COO & General Councel Sedo,
Steve Sturgeon Esq. CEO Sturgeon Law Group
Ari GoldBerger Esq. of EsqWire.com.
Paul Keating, Esq.of Renova Ltd
Dr. John BerryHill Esq. of JohnBerryhill.com
Phil Corwin Partner Butera & Andrews…Lobbyist for the ICA

The expansion of trademark laws
Trademarks are issues we have to deal with. When the US was founded, there were no trademark laws. Over time, others were using others’ corporate name and the concept of fraud came into the picture. Lawmakers can establish monopolies for good reasons.
Trademark remedies:
Injunction
Damages susteained by plaintiff
Treble damages

Domain name laws:
Trademark infringement
Icann domain name dispute policies
Anticybersquatting consumer protection act of 1999

Plaintiff chooses arbitration organicstion. Arbitration organicastion chooses arbitrators. Is that fair? What is next? The panelists that are on the panels that favor the domainers don’t get on the panels.

Anticybersquatting consumer protection act

The trademark owner will sue you in a remote court.
New abuses:
Domainer purchases domain name
Plaintiff offers to buy domain name
Domainer does not want to sell
Plaintiff files for trademark
Plaintiff initiates UDRP
Plaintiff loses UDRP
Plaintiff sues in federal court for $$$$$

There are many USPTO registered trademarks (for example, UPS has the trademark for Brown.). There are state registered trademarks, foreign country registered trademarks.

Cybersquatting claims are a vicious weapon.
How can you protect yourself? Anticipate problems, evaluate which could want your domain name. use your domain in safe ways. Beware of offers, which are often disguised to get you to say something that’s incriminating that they’ll use against you in federal court. You can be sued, you can be overwhelmed, your domain name can be taken away from you.

Dr. John BerryHill Esq. of JohnBerryhill.com
Word Mark Bully
Mops and floor brushes is one bully. Another bully is lawn mowers, namely walk-behind lawn mowers and ride-on lawn mowers of less then 12 horsepower.

There lots of things in the USPTO database. Just because there’s an entry that’s in the database doesn’t mean that there’s a trademark on the name. There’s an impression that the domain registerants that are exploiting the domain names. For a search engine to return results or alternatives, that’s not trademark infringement. It’s not trademark infringement in the real world to put like products near other products on the shelf.

Look out for magazine trademarks like golf, money, people, etc. Magazine owners tend to push around domainers.

Phil Corwin Partner Butera & Andrews…Lobbyist for the ICA
Trademark lawyers have discovered domains as a growth industry. They’re looking for new business and grossly exaggerating trademark infringement. Unlike patent and copyright law, trademark laws are based on protecting the consumer by protecting the consumer from buying something from someone other than the trademark owner.

They claim that $6 billion dollars of counterfeit goods were bought online last year because of cybersquatting. That’s just not possible. They claim that cybersquatting contributes to more phishing. They claim a connection between domain tasting and phishing and there’s just not any correlation between the two of them.

Trademark owners are trying to prove statutory damages.

Google sells ads against trademarks. Courts are saying that it’s okay.

Explaining internet issues to politicians isn’t easy. But they understand domain names. They understand buying ads against their competitors (Hillary ads show up when you search Google for Rudy Giuliani).

For protection, if you are the one owner and you individually violating the trademark then you are going to be named in the lawsuit. If you set up an organization that owns the domain name then that entity will be named in a lawsuit.

The TLD, .com .net and .org etc. does not have anything to do with the trademark. Just because if someone’s operating with a trademarked name, doesn’t mean that they’re operating it legally; they may get challenged at some point. Every situation is different when it comes to trademarks. Every case is different.

Comments

(Link)