New FTC Guideline Changing I.M Landscape Forever

Good article. Just my opinion, but all of those things sound like solid ethical practices that companies should have been abiding by all along. I'm sure many won't like it, but as a consumer, I'm glad to see an initiative like this.

I'm not a big proponent of Big Brother telling any size business what to do, but I'm all on board with minimizing the clandestine information mining practices.

Opt In - Not Opt out should be the general rule.

It's nice of them to say and I suppose anything that decreases spam is a good thing but we're being recorded almost 24 hours per day. Highway cams, red light cams, loyalty cards, twitter feeds etc.

IMHO unscrupulous sellers mining information for marketing purposes are the least of my privacy worries.

EU style cookie regulations here we come.

That article makes perfect sense to me and is really marketing 101. This is especially important and relevant if you are or want to become an information publisher.

Maybe you guys missed what I saw by reading between the lines... There is a statement in that article suggesting implied consent, the current standard with established legal precedent, should be changed similar to what the terrible EU law requires, in regards to cookies. This is just another foot in the door in regards to government regulation of how cookies are used and how consent for their use is given or revoked despite the fact that computer users generally have control over what kind of cookies they accept already. Be careful what you voice support for... You may want to look at how companies that have fully integrated cookie opt-in in the EU have had to do. This EU legislation was such a mess that the UK essentially just thumbed their nose at it restating that implied consent, the current standard for acceptance of published privacy and TOS policies, is still legit. When it comes to cookies and non personally identifiable information we need to be concerned any time the government raises its big ugly and sometimes ignorant head.

The biggest takeaway I got from that article was the quote from the lead attorney that said, “Putting the policy in the middle of 20 pages of caveats and legalese just confuses the customer.”

I predict you are going to start hearing more about terms of service being too confusing to consumers and therefore are null and void. This is an awful direction to go. In essence, they are saying contracts don't mean a thing if one of the parties claims they are dumb.

The Internet Marketing is going tougher day by day and we have to work with many regulations and limits. But what is good is something against spamming. But something like the point-

"The data that companies do collect should be discarded after the transaction is no longer relevant."

will be a big concern for companies for sure.

Interesting how the concern is only with online business. Last time I subscribed to a magazine I don't recall seeing any disclaimers about how they were going to sell my name and address to direct mail brokers.

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I can't see a problem with this from what I read. I know my wife will not use anything Google due to their data mining.

The issue about making legal terms "easier to understand" is that often the language is driven by court rulings. If judges began enforcing certain "reasonable" language and not enforcing "legalese" you would see a quick change in contracts. But what you find happens in the courtroom is far different than the "real world."

I recently reviewed an employment separation agreement where one paragraph was essentially one long run-on sentence that went FOR OVER A PAGE listing numerous California statutes the employee was waiving.

Any "regular" person would gag looking at it. But why is this common? Because of court rulings that unless a statute is specifically listed then an employee may not be waiving their rights under the statute. So instead of a simple - "employee waives all of their rights to pursue a claim against employer" you get a full page of unintelligible madness.

It isn't lawyers trying to bill more. It is about protecting the client. If that means dense legalese and precise use of certain words then that is what results.

Keep in mind the client is the website owner. That typically means legal terms are going to be one-sided. The goal isn't to be "fair." The goal is to be "unfair," protect the website owner, and give them every legal advantage possible.

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Thanks for posting this. Just read it