Forum Moderators: skibum
Advertising agencies or website designers are responsible for reviewing the information used to substantiate ad claims. They may not simply rely on an advertiser's assurance that the claims are substantiated. In determining whether an ad agency should be held liable, the FTC looks at the extent of the agency's participation in the preparation of the challenged ad, and whether the agency knew or should have known that the ad included false or deceptive claims.
BTW, the FTC has been making a few very public "busts" lately. They also haven't responded to the charges filed against the SEs for dirty SERPs. I expect to see them come out swinging on that one.
We need to legally protect ourselves.
An organization devoted to web publishers may be the best avenue to approach this. Basically we need a large group of concerned parties that can lobby.
The larger the number the more clout the org. would have. Basically the internet publishing market would be pooling their resouces (money and votes) to sway any further legislation regarding liabilities.
Otherwise, we will need to pursue specialty insurance, and have lawyers draft full disclosure contracts that our prospective clients will need to sign.
Perhaps a popup could take care of this.
"I designed this site but I make no guaranties that the products or service advertised here are legitimate"
:(
That might not make for happy clients. It's generally in design agreements that the client warrants legitimacy and is responsible for costs related to actions, but that's probably not enough protection.
I've been contacted about doing design/promotion/whatever with some sites that were dodgy. One I knew was making false claims about what they could deliver. With another it was for contracting a programmer to pull in and "borrow" real-time updated content from other sites to display on theirs. I don't go near them when there's any question at all.
And just where do they draw the line at "what is advertising"? Are people that pay to be in search engine databases, advertisers?
If so; "Houston, we have a problem".
"To call the attention of the public to a product or business."
Not so sure you have to pay someone to be an advertiser, just call attention to a product.
So webmasters running a banner agency run-of-network campaign can be held responsible for "Punch the Monkey and get $20" and "You have 1 NEW Message" banners.
I do agree there is a lot of misleading and deception online, and it would be great to be able to do something about it. However, I don't expect any government body can fully understand the medium when a large portion of people that work in the industry don't.
If this is enforced, then yup, we do have a problem.
