Free Speech in Advertising

by Patrick Ruffini :: October 11th, 2007 11:03 pm

On this one, I stand with Lance Dutson and the Collins campaign and not with MoveOn.org and Google who censored a legitimate political ad. I love Google as much as any technologist, but they’re flat wrong here.

In case you missed the brouhaha (which exploded onto Drudge and elsewhere), Susan Collins Internet director Lance Dutson placed Google AdWords ads fighting back against MoveOn’s extensive involvement in ME-SEN, raising upwards of six figures for Tom Allen.

William Beutler has some great comments responding to Google’s lame explanation over in the comments at TechRepublican:

So what Google’s saying is, MoveOn can place an ad criticizing Susan Collins, but Susan Collins can’t place an ad criticizing MoveOn?

The new campaign finance laws largely amounted to incumbent-protection, with its temporary, pre-election advertising blackout. Google’s TOS appears to be a permanent blackout on criticizing any proper nouns who’ve requested it. Both result in less speech.

What Dutson did is not Coke trying to compete with Pepsi. This is not a commercial brand wielding a rival’s trademark to drain profits from the competition. It is someone on one side of the political divide making a point about someone about someone on the other side. Isn’t that what political advertising should be about?

MoveOn is a political actor, which likes to fancy itself as the equivalent of a party or candidate committee. It runs ads that elicit strong pushback from official Republican committees and candidates. So, are now conceding that an organization like MoveOn is above criticism in the Web’s #1 advertising medium because they happen to be an organization with a trademark, rather than just an elected official or a party?

And more disturbingly, do politicians just trademark their name to (among other things) protect themselves from criticism on Google’s expanding ad network? If so, that’s a pretty severe distortion of the open, participatory online culture that Google claims to be fighting for. Major organizations and political rock stars with trademarks would be automatically immune. Everyone else, not so much.

That’s not as far off as you think. Hillary Clinton successfully sued for the rights to HillaryClinton.com citing the trademark rights to her name. Could she now wield that newfangled right to thwart paid online advertising against her?

Unlike the “miserable failure” Googlebomb, this strikes right at the heart of the company’s judgment. This controversy didn’t result from an algorithm, but from someone deep within the bowels of the company’s selective enforcement of trademark. This is not the first time that conservatives have felt the sting of Google’s censors first. Many conservative creative types have experienced just this sort of bias in other supposedly open Web services. In 2003, my anti-Che Guevara t-shirts were banned from Cafepress because (I was informed) a law firm called — appropriately — “Legend” informed the site they were very stringent about enforcing their rights to the iconic image.

Of course, this did not stop several other pro-Che Cafeshops from cashing in on the dead Commie’s copyright. My repeated emails to the company pointing this out were not responded to.

I don’t come down cleanly on either side of the current copyright wars. I think current IP law especially as it applies to software and music is a mess. I’m on Google’s side in the 700 MHz spectrum auction, but I think net neutrality worries are just hype.

But it’s abundantly clear to me that if we blindly accept Google’s claims just so we can assert our tech bona fides, conservatives will get the shaft. Why? Because enforcement will be manual and selective at best, with MoveOn getting better treatment than Wal-Mart and Exxon-Mobil with their phalanx of corporate attorneys. And guess who that helps?

Google has had no problem raging against trademarks (can you say Google Book Search?) and for an open Internet without walls around content. Certainly it should have no problem extending the same freedom to political speech on its ad network.

This isn’t the first time Lance Dutson has successfully fought back against the Left’s invasion of his state. Go Lance!

Tagged: advertising google online politics

Comments (

) Trackbacks (

WordPress database error: [Can't open file: 'prwp_comments.MYD'. (errno: 144)]
SELECT ID, COUNT( comment_ID ) AS ccount FROM prwp_posts LEFT JOIN prwp_comments ON ( comment_post_ID = ID AND comment_approved = '1' AND comment_type='') WHERE post_status = 'publish' AND ID IN (466) GROUP BY ID

WordPress database error: [Can't open file: 'prwp_comments.MYD'. (errno: 144)]
SELECT ID, COUNT( comment_ID ) AS ccount FROM prwp_posts LEFT JOIN prwp_comments ON ( comment_post_ID = ID AND comment_approved = '1' AND comment_type='pingback') WHERE post_status = 'publish' AND ID IN (466) GROUP BY ID

WordPress database error: [Can't open file: 'prwp_comments.MYD'. (errno: 144)]
SELECT ID, COUNT( comment_ID ) AS ccount FROM prwp_posts LEFT JOIN prwp_comments ON ( comment_post_ID = ID AND comment_approved = '1' AND comment_type='trackback') WHERE post_status = 'publish' AND ID IN (466) GROUP BY ID

0) del.icio.us digg it subscribe This was posted in: Uncategorized

Both comments and pings are currently closed.

Comments are closed.