Briefly, Section 230(c)(1) provides immunity from liability for providers and users of an interactive computer service who publish information provided by others:
No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider.

In order to use this provision, there are three elements:

1. The defendant must be a provider or user of an interactive computer service.
2. The cause of action asserted by the plaintiff must treat the defendant as the publisher or speaker of the published information at issue.
3. The information must be provided by another information content provider, i.e., the defendant must not be the information content provider of the published information at issue.

Section 230 does not protect providers or users from all harms, for example it would not protect the provider or user from criminal copyright infringement, or from violating fair housing laws, etc. Still, the fact that it works as it does provides us with the modern internet we know today.

Why I'm thankful for Section 230 is a post from: Cyberlaw Central

SFWeekly Web Editor Alexia Tsotsis (not pictured left) spent some time early this morning trying out Chatroulette, a website that connects random strangers for a video chat. The results are unlikely to surprise you. Unless you are new to this whole Internet thing. Screen shots of some of her more entertaining chats are below the post.

Harkening back to the days of A/S/L, the random vidchat service Chatroulette is one of those online arenas where not being a white male looking to get off puts you in a definite minority. Founded by a 17 year-old Russian high school student named Andrew Ternovskiy, the service is a more successful Omegle, combining elements of the MTV show Next with vidchat capabilities.

Aspiring chatees click to play and as an escape latch you or your partner can hit Next anytime if you get bored, scared, or have to get back to work. The Report video as inappropriate button also seems to provide some comfort, but by judging by the nsfw fare served to me last night, doesn't provide much of a threat.

I pressed play last night at around 3:00 am PST and after about 45 clicks on Next encountered 5 straight up penis shots, a lot of camera disabled chats, two women who automatically clicked Next once they figured out that I too was a female, and a lot of very grateful looking guys, including a Chinese fan of Google and a French guy in indoor sunglasses, who asked me whether I was a more dominate lady or submissive woman in the hope that I would be the former.

Out of the 10,920 of my fellow Chatroulette participants, my Roulettees were a good cross section of Internet humanity. And while I did not encounter the suicide hanging videos alluded to in many of the chats, things like did you hear the one about the guy who shot himself in the bath tub, were brought up in conversation quite a few times, as examples of just how crazy Chatroulette can get.

Anywhere you get a mass of people communicating uncensored (and yes much like 4chan.org, China has not yet blocked Chatroulette) will be subject to typical groupthink behavior like urban myths and requests for interaction better left to the casual encounters section of Craigslist. Nonetheless, the service's potential for more substantial acts of communication is formidable.

Chatroulette is what you'd expect it to be, micro-interactive reality TV with a large heaping of cybersex. While most people are (whether they admit it or not) voyeurs the fact that Chatroulette lets the both participants see each other limits the site's potential user base to the weirdos and despite piquing VC Fred Wilson's interest it doesn't seem like there's currently enough weirdos to turn the humble startup into something mainstream.

One Roulettee, when asked what he thought the service was most useful for, responded, connecting with people around the world. Yeah, and asking them to show you their boobs.

I will do a more comprehensive year in review for Cyberlaw generally, but I thought it would be fun to take a close look at how 47 USC 230 fared in 2009. This is the first full calendar year following the Ninth Circuit's en banc Roommates.com opinion, and many of us initially feared that the case would create a huge hole in 230's otherwise solid immunity. As it turns out, those concerns have not come to pass. If anything, 2009 shows us just how strong the immunity remains.

I blogged on a total of 22 cases issued in 2009 that discussed the statute. (I blog on every case I see that substantively discusses 47 USC 230). I blogged on other cases in 2009 that were decided before 2009, such as the Woodhull v. Meinel case from October 2008 and DC v. Harvard-Westlake, a 2007 arbitrator's dismissal that came to light in 2009.

Of the 22 calendar year 2009 cases, I would classify 14 of them (63%) as easy defense wins, frequently on a 12(b)(6) motion to dismiss or state law equivalent. Even many of the remaining 8 cases contained good news for defendants. For example, in Shiamili, the defense inexplicably lost at the district court level but got an easy reversal on appeal. The Stayart court granted Yahoo an easy defense win, although co-defendant Various didn't get the 230 ruling. Similarly, the Barnes case granted the defense an easy 230 win on one theory (negligent undertaking) but denied 230 for a different one (promissory estoppel). The Certain Approval Process case said 230 did not prevent the plaintiff from amending the complaint to add a cause of action, but once added, the court instantly zapped the claim on other grounds.

This leaves four unambiguous 230 defense losses in 2009. The leading 230 defense loss was the Tenth Circuit FTC v. Accusearch case, which held a retailer liable for reselling illicit phone records. The other major 230 defense loss was the NPS v. StubHub case, which held that 230 may not apply to a lawsuit over the alleged illegal ticket scalping by StubHub's sellers. Both of these cases involve the retailing of illegal items, suggesting that 230's boundaries may not reach that far.

The other two defense losses are less consequential. The Project Playlist held that 230 does not preempt state IP law claims, a conclusion that deserves note only because the Ninth Circuit held otherwise in the 2007 ccBill case. I believe that no other courts will follow the Ninth Circuit's rule that 230 preempts state IP laws, making the Project Playlist ruling unsurprising.

In People v. Gourlay, a web host was denied a 230 defense to a criminal prosecution for child molestation- and child pornography-related claims. This case turns mostly on the web host's active role creating the child pornography (as well as the host's molestation of the child actor); with that context, this case may have little influence on other cases. Indeed, the court made clear that web hosts providing standard web hosting services could fully qualify for 230 protection against a state criminal prosecution of child pornography dissemination.

In reverse chronological order, a brief overview of the 230 cases from 2009:

Nemet Chevrolet v. ConsumerAffairs.com (4th Cir. Dec. 29, 2009). One of three federal appellate court 230(c)(1) rulings in 2009 (Barnes and Accusearch are the others). A solid defense win for a consumer review website. The plaintiff's claims that the website contributed to the reviews' development and fabricated reviews were tossed on a 12(b)(6) motion to dismiss.

Shiamili v. Real Estate Group (N.Y. App. Div. Dec. 17, 2009). In an unpublicized January 2009 decision, the trial court denied a website's 230 dismissal request for claims based on user-supplied comments. In December, this error was fixed on appeal despite allegations that the website chooses and administers the user content.

Dart v. Craigslist (N.D. Ill. Oct. 20, 2009). Craigslist got a big win in its ongoing battles with various government agencies over prostitution ads on Craigslist when the court held it wasn't liable for those ads.

Riggs v. MySpace (C.D. Cal. Sept. 17, 2009). A goofy case. The court holds that MySpace's deletion of Riggs' account was protected by 230(c)(1) on the apparent theory that Riggs (the plaintiff) was the third party supplier of the deleted content. This case would make more sense as a 230(c)(2) case.

Finkel v. Facebook (N.Y. Sup. Ct. Sept. 15, 2009). Facebook wasn't liable for the contents of a user's private group even though Facebook placed a copyright notice on the page.

Intellect Art v. Milewski (N.Y. Sup. Ct. Sept. 15, 2009). Ripoff Report wins again.

Stayart v. Yahoo (E.D. Wis. Aug. 28, 2009). An convoluted, and possibly confused, ruling that Yahoo wasn't liable for search results snippets. However, Various was denied 230 because it may have originated the content in question.

Cornelius v. DeLuca (E.D. Mo. Aug. 18, 2009). An online retailer wasn't liable for user-supplied comments despite a conspiracy allegation.

Goddard v. Google (N.D. Cal. July 30, 2009). This is a follow-on ruling to an important December 2008 ruling in this case, which dismissed the plaintiff's complaints but gave the plaintiffs another chance. The December 2008 ruling is one of the most interesting and important decisions interpreting Roommates.com. In the July ruling, the judge again found that 230 insulates Google from liability due to allegedly fraudulent ads run through its network and granted a final dismissal.

Doe II v. MySpace (Cal. App. Ct. June 30, 2009). MySpace isn't liable for users' sexual assaults on other users.

FTC v. Accusearch (10th Cir. June 29, 2009). The second of three federal appellate court rulings on 230(c)(1). The defendant was an online retailer of illegal phone records. The retailer claimed that the phone records came from third party suppliers and therefore 230 immunized the retailer from liability associated with the records. The court echoed the Ninth Circuit's Roommates.com decision, effectively extending that case to the Tenth Circuit, and said that the retailer was responsible for selling the illicit phone records despite 230.

Zango v. Kaspersky (9th Cir. June 25, 2009). This is the only 2009 ruling addressing 47 USC 230(c)(2), the overshadowed and frequently overlooked sibling of 230(c)(1). Despite the rarity of 230(c)(2) cases, this case could be fairly influential. The Ninth Circuit held that 230(c)(2) protected an anti-spyware software vendor's decision to classify software as a threat. If you missed it, you might want to take a look at my presentation slides on 230(c)(2), which distill my deep look at 230(c)(2) this summer.

Gibson v. Craigslist (S.D.N.Y. June 15, 2009). Craigslist isn't liable for physical injury caused by a gun purchased via a Craigslist ad.

Doe IX v. MySpace (E.D. Tex. May 22, 2009). MySpace isn't liable for users' sexual assaults on other users.

Barnes v. Yahoo (9th Cir. May 7, 2009; amended opinion June 22, 2009). The third of three federal appellate court opinions on 230(c)(1). The Ninth Circuit held that 230 preempted a claim against a service provider for negligently delaying the removal of user content (essentially, Zeran redux), but 230 did not preempt a promissory estoppel claim based on promises the service provider made to the person requesting takedown. The initial Ninth Circuit opinion had two other unfortunate digressions: (1) it said that 230 was an affirmative defense that did not support a 12(b)(6) motion to dismiss, and (2) the opinion had ambiguous language implying that 230 preempted only state claims, not federal claims. The amended opinion helpfully eliminated both digressions.

Atlantic Records v. Project Playlist (S.D.N.Y. March 25, 2009). 230 does not preempt a state IP claimin this case, a violation of state copyright law for pre-1972 sound recordings.

Joyner v. Lazzareschi (Cal. App. Ct. March 18, 2009). A message board operator wasn't liable for user posts.

Raggi v. Las Vegas Police (D. Nev. March 10, 2009). A union wasn't liable for messages that union members posted on the union-operated message board.

Certain Approval Programs v. Xcentric Ventures (D. Ariz. March 9, 2009). 230 did not bar amending a complaint to add a new cause of action when the plaintiff also adequately alleged that the Ripoff Report contributed to the creation and development of the content at issue.

People v. Gourlay (Mich. App. Ct. March 3, 2009). This case involves the prosecution of a pornographic web host who also molested the child actor. The web host asserted a 230 defense in trying to overturn the conviction for the charges related to pornography dissemination. Although 230 can preempt state criminal prosecutions, and web hosts are protected by 230 for their ordinary web hosting activities, this web host actively participated in the site's development and therefore lost 230's protection.

NPS v. StubHub (Mass. Super. Ct. Jan. 26, 2009). In a long-running battle between the New England Patriots and season ticketholders who want to resell their tickets via StubHub, StubHub was denied summary judgment on 230 grounds. The court cites Roommates.com in saying that StubHub may have contributed to illegal ticket scalping sufficient to potentially disqualify it for 230 protection.

GW Equity v. Xcentric Ventures (N.D. Tex. Jan. 9, 2009). Ripoff Report is protected by 230 even though it offers pull-down menus and manipulates user-submitted reports.

Nemet Chevrolet Ltd. v. ConsumerAffairs.com, Inc., No. 08-2097 (4th Cir. Dec. 29, 2009)

Introduction

Citing 47 USC 230, today the Fourth Circuit upheld a 12(b)(6) dismissal of defamation and related claims against a consumer review website. This case is noteworthy because the court rejected some common allegations that plaintiffs make to evade 230, so this case may help defendants get 12(b)(6) motions to dismiss more easily.

ConsumerAffairs.com is a consumer review website with a twist: it works in conjunction with a law firm that mines the submitted complaints for potential class action lawsuits. In June 2008, I blogged about the district court's 12(b)(6) dismissal of the case.

Development of the Reviews

Nemet tried two tactics in its complaint to draft around 230. First, it alleged that ConsumerAffairs.com partially developed 20 reviews. Nemet pled:

Upon information and belief, Defendant participated in the preparation of this complaint by soliciting the complaint, steering the complaint into a specific category designed to attract attention by consumer class action lawyers, contacting the consumer to ask questions about the complaint and to help her draft or revise her complaint, and promising the consumer that she could obtain some financial recovery by joining a class action lawsuit. Defendant is therefore responsible, in whole or in part, for developing the substance and content of the false complaint . . . about the Plaintiffs.

These allegations do not survive a 12(b)(6) motion to dismiss.

* the website "structure and design" argument fails, despite Nemet's attempt to invoke Roommates.com, because ConsumerAffairs' structure was not illegal. To me, the court's discussion reinforces that Roommates.com' real holding is If you don't encourage illegal content, or design your website to require users to input illegal content, you will be immune. Chalk this case up as yet another citation of Roommates.com for the defense.

* Asking users questions about their posts does not qualify as development.

* The unsupported assertion that ConsumerAffairs edited posts did not pass the Iqbal standard. Plus, as Zeran indicated, 230 protects editorial decisions, so the allegations needed to assert some editing beyond this protected zone.

Review Fabrication

Second, Nemet alleged that ConsumerAffairs fabricated 8 reviews. Nemet pled:

Because Plaintiffs cannot confirm that the [customer] complaint . . . was even created by a Nemet Motors Customer based on the date, model of car, and first name, Plaintiffs believe that the complaint. . . was fabricated by the Defendant for the purpose of attracting other consumer complaints. By authoring the complaint . . . the Defendant was therefore responsible for the substance and content of the complaint.

This allegation has an obvious (and IMO embarrassing) logic flaw. Even if Nemet can't use its records to validate the facts in a consumer review, ConsumerAffairs.com's fabrication of the post is only one of many possible explanations. The court notes some other possible explanations: "the post could be anonymous, falsified by the consumer, or simply missed by Nemet." (I would also add the possibility of weak recordkeeping by Nemet). To try to get around this logical deficiency, Nemet marshals up some additional allegations:

(1) that Nemet has an excellent professional reputation, (2) none of the consumer complaints at issue have been reported to or acted upon by the New York City Department of Consumer Affairs, (3) Consumeraffairs.com's sole source of income is advertising and this advertising is tied to its webpage content, and (4) some of the posts on Consumeraffairs.com's website appeared online after their listed creation date

But all of these facts are non-sequiturs; none of them show that ConsumerAffairs fabricated the posts, and post-Iqbal these allegations are not enough to state a claim. The dissent disagreed with this conclusion (about the alleged fabrication) and would have allowed those claims to proceed.

230 as an Immunity Redux

In FN 4, the court notes that the Seventh Circuit questioned if 230(c)(1) was just a definitional section. Citing Zeran, which addressed this issue explicitly, the court says "Of whatever academic interest that distinction may be, our Circuit clearly views the 230 provision as an immunity:" As a result, the court "aim[s] to resolve the question of 230 immunity at the earliest possible stage of the case because that immunity protects websites not only from 'ultimate liability,' but also from 'having to fight costly and protracted legal battles.'" It looks like there could be a brewing catfight between circuits over whether 230(c)(1) is an immunity, an affirmative defense, a definitional section or something else.

Conclusion

Given that this court was bound by the Zeran precedent, it's perhaps not surprising that the court found 230 protection for a consumer review website. Nevertheless, by rejecting another plaintiff's attempt to make hay from Roommates.com and rejecting weakly supported allegations of fabrication, this court gave defendants even more support to fend off claims that are, at their core, based on third party content.

The updated census of Roommates.com citations:

Roommates.com Cited for Defense (11 cases): GW Equity v. Xcentric, Best Western v. Furber, Goddard v. Google (and second ruling) Joyner v. Lazzareschi, Atlantic Records v. Project Playlist, Barnes v. Yahoo (note: although the case was a partial loss for the defendant, the Roommates.com discussion came in the defense-favorable part), Doe IX v. MySpace, Doe II v. MySpace, Dart v. Craigslist, Shiamili v. Real Estate Group, Nemet v. ConsumerAffairs

Roommates.com Cited for Plaintiff (2 cases): NPS v. StubHub, FTC v. Accusearch

Dart v. Craigslist, Inc., 09 C 1385 (N.D. Ill. Oct. 20, 2009)

Yesterday, Judge John F. Grady of the Northern District of Illinois federal court dismissed Cook County Sheriff Dart's lawsuit against Craigslist for user-posted advertisements in Craigslist's erotic services/adult services category on 47 USC 230 grounds. This is hardly surprising, as I wrote in March that "this lawsuit is almost certainly preempted by 47 USC 230." However, it was nice to see such a clean and decisive opinion--and a little ironic, as our law enforcement officials, who are supposed to enforce the laws rather than bypass them, got schooled in the limits of their legal authority.

With respect to the 230 analysis, the court characterizes Sheriff Dart's claims as alleging that Craigslist negligently published the user-supplied ads. The court says that the Seventh Circuit implicitly said that 230 preempted such claims in the 2008 CLC v. Craigslist case. To get around this, Sheriff Dart tried a Roommates.com styled attack, arguing that Craigslist induced the users' advertisements by creating an erotic/adult services category and letting users do keyword searches. These arguments go nowhere (making this yet another case where Roommates.com is cited for the defense). An adult services category can legitimately contain postings for legal services, and the keyword search functionality was agnostic about the illegality of the search and therefore a "neutral tool" (whatever that meant from Roommates.com).

Two other interesting doctrinal notes from the opinion:

* In FN 6, the court reiterates that 230 preempts a civil action to enforce a federal criminal statute. See Doe v. Bates.

* the court rejects arguments that Craigslist "arranges" meetings for prostitution, "directs" people to prostitution or "provides" contact info for prostitutes because, in all three cases, the user-supplied ad (if anything) satisfies those verbs. Similarly, Craigslist's role in "facilitating," "assisting" or "aiding and abetting" these user activities is governed by 230. I believe this is consistent with my view that 230 should preempt any claim that one party "endorses" third party online content.

Given some ambiguous language floating in Seventh Circuit 230 jurisprudence from the CLC v. Craigslist case and the old Doe v. GTE case, it wouldn't surprise me if Sheriff Dart tried an appeal. However, this opinion was solidly reasoned and completely consistent with that jurisprudence, so I wouldn't expect a different result on appeal.

Google makes its money mostly from targeted advertising on product searches and other narrow, directed searches. The advertising on news-related searches is not nearly as valuable. Google could remove all newspapers and journalism content from its Web search catalog tomorrow and lose very little of its revenue. The links to news it provides are valuable to its users but not terribly valuable to its advertisers.

Most galling was that The Huffington Post's use of an Associated Press version of SI's report was initially tops on Google, which meant that it, and not SI.com, tended to be the place readers clicking through to get the gist of the breaking scandal would land.... Why did The Huffington Post come up ahead of SI.com? Because, even Google insiders concede, Huffington is effective at implementing search optimization techniques, which means that its manipulation of keywords, search terms, and the dynamics of Web protocol give it an advantage over others scrambling to be the place readers are sent by search engines. What angered the people at Sports Illustrated and Time Inc. is that Google, acting as traffic conductor, seemed unmoved by their grievance over what had happened to their ownership of the story. An SI editor quoted to me Time Inc's editor-in-chief, John Huey, noting crisply that, "talking to Google is like trying to talk to a television."

Gibson v. Craigslist, 2009 WL 1704355 (SDNY June 15, 2009). The CMLP page. The Justia page.

In my lengthy deconstruction of the Barnes v. Yahoo case, I criticized the Ninth Circuit for concluding that 47 USC 230 was an affirmative defense (and thus could not support a 12b6 motion to dismiss) without proper briefing or analysis. First, this was sloppy work by the court. Second, the elimination of a 12b6 possibility for the defendants creates a real risk that defendants will be exposed to expensive and time-consuming discovery to eliminate plainly meritless cases. Yahoo and a group of amici have asked the Ninth Circuit to reconsider this aspect of the ruling, and I hope they do so.

Meanwhile, today's case does a competent job reviewing whether or not 47 USC 230 can support a 12b6 motion to dismiss. Unlike the Ninth Circuit, it actually cites and discusses the numerous cases in the area although, remarkably, it does not cite or address the Barnes v. Yahoo case! The court reaches the sensible positions that (1) 47 USC 230 does support a 12b6 motion, (2) as a result, the plaintiff was not entitled to discovery, and (3) the case should be dismissed. For more discussion on why 47 USC 230 supports a 12b6, see Paul Levy's excellent brief.

Substantively, today's lawsuit is brought by a shooting victim who claims that the shooter bought the gun via Craigslist. The complaint argues that Craigslist had a duty to prevent the sale of guns to future criminals and therefore Craigslist breached the duty. This argument is similar to the Doe v. MySpace cases (1, 2) in which the plaintiffs argued that MySpace had a duty to police its website "premises" to prevent online communications that lead to offline crimes. The plaintiff's argument here fares no better here than it did in the MySpace cases. 47 USC 230 precludes the imposition of liability for any breach of duty by failing to police its users' communications (putting aside the also-relevant inquiry of whether Craigslist could have any duty that would have prevented this offline tragedy). The plaintiff tries to get around 230 by arguing it's just trying to hold Craigslist accountable as a "business" rather than as a speaker or publisher of third party content, but the court rejects this goofy argument as "unpersuasive."

More on the case from Eugene Volokh.

If anything sucks more than being the target of an ambitious but delusional gubernatorial candidate who has suddenly developed a bit of a fetish for prostitution, it's being ignored by that candidate. As far as Village Voice sees the world, Craigslist just got a bunch of free press. And they want their share.

When Craigslist management was facing a criminal investigation for listings on the site they did the smart thing. They talked about the law, and they pointed out that the real smut was on other sites that were being ignored by the South Carolina Attorney General. If you really want hard core porn and prostitution, Craigslist CEO Jim Buckmaster pointed out, check out Village Voice's BackPage.com.

That's all body fluids under the bridge now, of course, since a federal judge smacked down McMaster and forbid him from stalking Craigslist management.

But Village Voice is still smarting from those Buckmaster links in that blog post. Yesterday they issued a very official press release titled Village Voice Media to Craigslist CEO Buckmaster: Calm Down, Back Off; There is Nothing Wrong With a Little Competition.

In an email, Village Voice's PR firm accuses Buckmaster of leveraging the legal bind he's in to damage Craigslist's competition.

The real reason for the press release and press outreach, of course, is to get a little bit of the spotlight pointed to backpages, too. Because their official story doesn't make sense.

Backpages has adult ads, lots and lots of them, and they're proud of it: We will continue to exercise our right to accept legal adult postings, they say. All Buckmaster did was link to a whole bunch of them. And since backpages desperately needs the traffic, what they really should be doing is thanking Craigslist, not attacking them.

What we learned today: If you really want to pay for sex, backpages is the place to go.

Full press release is below:

Village Voice Media to Craigslist CEO Buckmaster: Calm Down, Back Off; There is Nothing Wrong With a Little Competition

PHOENIX, May 29 /PRNewswire/ Last Friday, Jim Buckmaster, CEO of Craigslist, fired a deliberate, unnecessary and wholly inaccurate shot across the bow of Village Voice Media and backpage.com, our online classified advertising property. Given the serious nature of what Buckmaster inferred in his post about Village Voice Media newspapers and backpage.com, we can't sit on our hands and be silent.

In the original blog post, which was later submarine edited to reword and soften some of the attacks towards Village Voice Media, Buckmaster complained that politicians are attacking Craigslist but not Village Voice Media and other media outlets because they have a need for positive stories and campaign endorsements from those very same newspapers.

Is it possible that writing stories critical of Craigslist's (relatively tame) adult service' section is more career-friendly than attacking their own employer (or journalistic media brethren) for operating a (far more graphic) adult service' section of their own?

Buckmaster and Craigslist are in a tough, and in many ways, frightening situation - they have a number of moralistic state Attorneys General threatening them over their adult ads, and a raft of bad press following the terrible tragedy in Boston that the company is admittedly in no way responsible for. But, the manner in which Buckmaster is responding to this pressure - by disingenuously lashing out at competitors and caving to political pressure - is inexcusable, and displays a remarkable lack of sound judgment.

In 2002, Village Voice Media recognized the forces that were changing the classified advertising market and created backpage.com to answer that challenge. We've put a lot of work into making it the No. 2 free classifieds site in U.S. We're fine with being No. 2, proud in fact. Buckmaster, apparently, is not. Instead of working with his competitors to find a way to solve, or at least mitigate issues surrounding adult ads - the shortcomings of automatic content filters is something we are all trying to fix - Buckmaster simply attempted to take the competition down with him. And, his methods leave much to be desired.

First off, our newspapers don't endorse politicians and rarely have anything nice to say about them, so to say that politicians aren't going after Village Voice Media because they need our endorsement isn't viable. Secondly, Buckmaster is only complaining because a competitor is challenging his economic advantage in the free classified arena - which he built in part on adult ads - and has made him a very wealthy man. His talk of building community and serving his users rings hollow. It now appears that, as is so often the case with New Age entrepreneurs, it's all about the money.

We will continue to exercise our right to accept legal adult postings from our users and concentrate on growing backpage.com. We are aggressively building additional technical solutions as well as increasing our manual site inspections to improve efficiency of removing content that is illegal or otherwise violates our Terms of Use.

About Village Voice Media

Village Voice Media is a collection of 15 weekly newspapers and daily Web sites, including New York's Village Voice, the LA Weekly, Denver's Westword and the Phoenix New Times. Online, in print, and on mobile devices, VVM's products combine music, food and events coverage with gritty, hard-hitting journalism to create the most powerful city guides in each market. While the focus of the brand is local, its free classifieds site backpage.com, partnership with social recommendation engine LikeMe.net and national sales force, Voice Media Group, extend its reach on a national level.

Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.

Carlo Longino is an expert at the Insight Community. To get insight and analysis from Carlo Longino and other experts on challenges your company faces, click here.

Goddard v. Google, Inc., 2008 WL 5245490 (N.D. Cal. Dec. 17, 2008). My initial post when the complaint was filed. The Justia page.

Goddard sued Google because Google displayed third party AdWords ads for allegedly fraudulent mobile subscription services. On its face, this lawsuit appeared preempted by 47 USC 230 (consistent with other opinions granting 230 for third party ads, such as the recent Cisneros case), although the plaintiff included some allegations to try to get around 230. No such luck for them. This ruling kicks the lawsuit out on 230(c)(1) grounds with leave to amend (more on that in a moment).

I'm a big fan of Judge Fogel's opinions. He's a meticulous and thoughtful judge, and his opinions are always carefully constructed. In particular, this opinion is a terrific read for anyone who would like to see a cutting-edge 230 opinion. It discusses many of the major recent 230 cases (Roommates.com, Mazur, Doe v. MySpace, Craigslist, National Numismatic) and contextualizes them nicely. It's like a 230 year-in-review opinion. If you want a one-stop resource to see what's happened in 47 USC 230 jurisprudence in 2008, read this opinion.

Among other interesting aspects, this is the first opinion by a Ninth Circuit-bound district court judge that has a robust analysis of how Roommates.com applies to the case. (Roommates.com has been cited in a few other opinions, but usually in a very cursory fashion). Judge Fogel deftly wrestles with the multiple contradictory provisions of Roommates.com, noting that it is principally is a defendant-favorable ruling with only a thin layer of plaintiff-side opportunity. For example, Fogel reads the Roommates.com opinion very narrowly when he says "The [Roommates.com] court emphasized repeatedly that the website lost immunity only by forcing its users to provide the allegedly discriminatory information as a condition of access." The opinion did say that, but I'm not sure about the "only," and it said lots of other contradictory things as well.

The Unfair Competition Claim

The plaintiff argued that Google engaged in 17200 unfair competition by receiving funds from fraudulent ads. Though this may be a novel way of framing Google's involvement, it doesn't adequately mask the underlying argument that the defendant should lose 230 coverage because it received an economic benefit from third party tortious conduct--an argument that has been rejected many, many times before and doesn't fare any better here. The court reframes the argument as a premises liability argument and rejects it per Gentry and Doe v. MySpace.

Along the way, the court addresses the plaintiff's allegation in the complaint that Google helped draft the impermissible ad copy. The plaintiff didn't press this point after the complaint, and the court says (referencing its reading of Roommates.com) that "there is no suggestion in the current record that Google encouraged the [advertisers] to create the allegedly fraudulent content, or that the creation of such content was anything less than voluntary."

The court also addressed the plaintiff's argument that the claim was anchored in the federal anti-money laundering criminal statute and therefore should drop out of 230 per the exclusion for federal criminal law (230(e)(1)). The court correctly rejects this but doesn't cite precedent on this point, missing Doe v. Bates.

Breach of Contract/Negligence

The plaintiff's other main attack vector is that Google should be liable because it failed to enforce a provision in Google's AdWords contract with advertisers restricting fraudulent conduct. I've complained repeatedly about arguments trying to treat a vendor's contractual negative behavioral restriction as an affirmative representation by the vendor that such behavior won't occur on the website (my latest rant on this point). Fortunately, Judge Fogel has little difficulty rejecting this argument, correctly pointing to the Green v. AOL precedent involving the distribution of third party viruses in an AOL chatroom (the Noah v. AOL precedent would have been an appropriate additional citation).

To try to get around this, the plaintiff cites to the Mazur case, which said that eBay can be liable for its affirmative marketing representations even if they are rendered untrue by third party conduct. I've repeatedly expressed my concern that the Mazur case is a more scary ruling to defendants than Roommates.com, but this opinion slightly calms my fears. Judge Fogel correctly notes that Google never made affirmative marketing representations on this point and the negative behavioral restrictions in the AdWords contract weren't an affirmative marketing representation.

Google also argued that this line of claims are barred by 230(c)(2), the immunization for filtering decisions. Citing to National Numismatic v. eBay, Judge Fogel rejects the argument based on the statutory list of immunized harmful content, saying "the relevant portions of Google's Content Policy require that [advertisers] provide pricing and cancellation information regarding their services. These requirements relate to business norms of fair play and transparency and are beyond the scope of 230(c)(2)." I'm not sure the 230(c)(2) argument was Google's strongest, but I would have loved to see Judge Fogel unpack this discussion and the implicit assumptions a little more.

Aiding and Abetting

Finally, the court rejects the attempted 230 pleadaround that Google aided and abetted the advertisers, saying "there are no allegations here that Google developed the offending ads in any respect." (Cite to Roommates.com).

Leave to Amend

Given that this case was filed after the Roommates.com en banc opinion, and therefore the plaintiff had the chance to structure the complaint based on a reading of the latest Ninth Circuit standard, it would have made sense to dismiss this complaint without leave to amend. Instead, Judge Fogel gives the plaintiff another chance and articulates his reading of allegations that should survive 230 preemption:

there may be instances in which an internet content provider will be considered responsible' at least in part' for [posted third-party content] because every [posting] is a collaborative effort between the internet provider and the third-party content provider. Fair Housing Council, 521 F.3d at 1167. If Plaintiff could establish Google's involvement in creating or developing the AdWords, either in whole or in part, she might avoid the statutory immunity created by 230. In light of that possibility, Plaintiff will be given an opportunity to amend her complaint in order to allege such involvement.

Reading between the lines, the writing is on the wall for this lawsuit. The plaintiff can't win, and it would be a mistake for the plaintiff to refile. The judge even says as much in a footnote to this quote, saying "at present it appears unlikely that Plaintiff can" make the requisite allegations. Nonetheless, I'd be shocked if the plaintiff didn't refile. If they do, I hope Judge Fogel vigilantly polices the boundaries of Rule 11 for any allegations the plaintiffs make but can't back up--just like he did in the KinderStart v. Google case.

A Final Point

By my count, this is the third post-Roommates.com case where Roommates.com has been cited in favor of the defendant in kicking the case out of court. (The other two are Best Western v. Furber and GW Equity). In contrast, I am not aware of any case yet citing Roommates.com in favor of a plaintiff. It's obviously early, but at this point the limited evidence suggests that Roommates.com was not a watershed change to 230 jurisprudence. On that basis, Roommates.com may not be as bad a substantive ruling as we had initially feared.

Despite being three years old, the Dear Red States Craigslist posting from 2005 is suddenly circulating again. I guess it must be election season that has revived this. But I figured I'd take a quick shot at a response.

Dear Red States We've decided we're leaving. We intend to form our own country, and we're taking the other Blue States with us.

Hot Damn. Thanks. You're like people who have stayed long after the rest of the party goers have gone home. We've been hoping you'd finally leave, but we're too polite to simply throw you out.

In case you aren't aware, that includes Hawaii, Oregon, Washington, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan, Illinois and all the Northeast. We believe this split will be beneficial to the nation, and especially to the people of the new country of New California.

To sum up briefly: You get Texas, Oklahoma and all the slave states. We get stem cell research and the best beaches.

Well, actually, Minnesota, Michigan, Wisconsin and Washington are typically considered swing states, but you can have them. Congratulations. You got two states too cold to live in, a failing automotive industry, and Washington.

As for the beaches, we got the entire gulf coast an the Atlantic up to North Carolina. You got the rocky coast of the northwest and the Jersey Shore (whose tourism board just recently announced their new slogan Guidos in Speedos). Again. Congrats.

We get the Statue of Liberty. You get Dollywood. We get Intel and Microsoft. You get WorldCom. We get Harvard. You get Ole' Miss. We get 85 percent of America 's venture capital and entrepreneurs.

I don't mean to quibble with your argument, but Bank of America is the nation's largest and one of the few solvent banks. It's located in North Carolina. We'll take that.

I also suspect that most of the corporate CEOs that built that wealth will move in with us since better than 75% of them vote Republican.

You get Alabama. We get two-thirds of the tax revenue; you get to make the red states pay their fair share.

You can have the tax revenue. We'll give the other 1/3 back to the people since they know how to spend it better than your army of bureaucrats.

Since our aggregate divorce rate is 22 percent lower than the Christian Coalition's, we get a bunch of happy families. You get a bunch of single moms.

Please be aware that Nuevo California will be pro-choice and anti-war, and we're going to want all our citizens back from Iraq at once. If you need people to fight, ask your evangelicals. They have kids they're apparently willing to send to their deaths for no purpose, and they don't care if you don't show pictures of their children's caskets coming home. We do wish you success in Iraq, and hope that the WMDs turn up, but we're not willing to spend our resources in Bush's Quagmire

Since our troops will be coming home in a year under President Bush's plan anyway, that's fine with us.

You're also likely impose strict gun control while we a) have a tendency to support regime change b) have a lot of guns. In addition, since most of America's nuclear arsenal sits in silos in the red states, if we ever decide we want New California back Well, let's just say, Sleep tight!

With the Blue States in hand, we will have firm control of 80% of the country's fresh water, more than 90 % of the pineapple and lettuce, 92 % of the nation's fresh fruit, 95 %of America's quality wines (you can serve French wines at state dinners) 90% of all cheese, 90% of the high tech industry, most of the U.S. low-sulfur coal, all living redwoods, sequoias and condors, all the Ivy and Seven Sister schools, plus Harvard, Yale, Stanford, Cal Tech and MIT.

You got me there. Let's just hope that all the Asian students who are attending those schools will let you mow their lawns when they graduate.

While I will miss the pineapple, I think I speak for my red state family when I say we're ok giving up the wine and stinky cheese. After all, we still have all the Jack Daniels from Tennesee, all the Coors and Budweiser beer products from Colorado and Missouri, most of America's steak, and all the cigars we can roll with that North Carolina tobacco.

You also seem to forget that a) we will get most of America's total acreage. We get America's strategic oil reserve, we get all the oil in Texas and Alaska. With a much smaller population, we'll have enough energy to last generations. If we run short, we have no problem drilling off the coast of New California since we know we won't run into you there. Even if we do, like I said, we have all the guns.

That is a shame about the condors. I hear they're good eatin'.

With the Red States, on the other hand, you will have to cope with 88 % of all obese Americans (and their projected health care costs), 92% of all U.S. mosquitoes, nearly 100 percent of the tornadoes, 90% of the hurricanes, 99% of all Southern Baptists, virtually 100% of all televangelists, Rush Limbaugh, Bob Jones University, Clemson and the University of Georgia.

I can live with that.

We get Hollywood and Yosemite, thank you. Additionally, 38 % of those in the Red states believe Jonah was actually swallowed by a whale, 62% believe life is sacred unless we're discussing the death penalty or gun laws, 44% say that evolution is only a theory, 53% that Saddam was involved in 9/11, and 61% of you crazy bastards believe you are people with higher morals then we lefties.

By the way, we're taking the good pot, too. You can have that dirt weed they grow in Mexico .

Peace out,
Blue States

Ugh! You get Hollywood? Bummer. You've just taken on a huge sector of the economy that creates little of actual value, yet gets paid better than most CEOs. But we're willing to accept that since you have agreed to permanently dispose of Paris Hilton, Rosie O'Donnell, and Britney Spears. Thanks for taking care of that for us.

In closing, let me simply say thank you again. I think this arrangement will work out beautifully.

Judge Zagel granted defendant Comcast judgment on the pleadings, dismissing plaintiff e360Insight's ("e360") Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, First Amendment, and related state law claims. e360, an Internet marketer and accused email spammer, alleged that Comcast harmed e360 by unjustifiably blocking all or most of e360's emails from Comcast's customer email accounts. Comcast stopped e360's emails with filtering software that identified and stopped emails from e360 addresses.

Comcast argued that the Good Samaritan clause of the Communications Decency Act, 47 U.S.C. 230(c)(2), provided Comcast absolute immunity from e360's claims because Comcast voluntarily filtered e360's emails to restrict access to what Comcast believed was objectionable content. The Court held that the Good Samaritan clause provided absolute immunity for ISPs that filtered for objectionable material. The Court also held that Judge St. Eve's and the Seventh Circuit's recent Chicago Lawyers' Committee v. Craigslist opinions click here for more on those cases were not applicable. Those opinions limited the clause's protection for ISPs that chose not to filter. Because Comcast filtered, it enjoyed absolute protection. The Court also held that e360's compliance with Congress's spam prevention laws, 15 U.S.C. 7701-13 (Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography and Marketing Act of 2003 ("CAN-SPAM") was irrelevant. Regardless of compliance with CAN-SPAM, the Good Samaritan clause still allowed the ISP to make a good faith judgment that e360's emails were objectionable. And e360 did not sufficiently plead Comcast's lack of good faith in determining that the emails were objectionable.

Eric Goldman at the Technology & Marketing Law Blog has a good post on this case and several other district court cases considering 230(c) defenses. click here for his post.

Jon Dahl of Slantwise Design presented at Minnebar on "Consulting for fun and profit"

Dahl provided a Jeopardy style list of topics to choose from. The thoughts below come from a combination of Dahl and audience participation.

Hiring

Pitfalls to avoid with hiring employees. Should you fire friends? The audience differed on the value of this. Don't hurt your business by hiring someone just because they're a friend, but do hire those who are truly valuable.

90% of working with people is chemistry. But it's hard to know whether someone will have the right chemistry based on interviews. Try to find people with complimentary skills. Don't mistake the effectiveness of your personal relationship for a relationship that would work in a business setting.

You may like the people you work with but not hang out with them. That's fine.

We have found all of our developers through Craigslist and the community (events like Minnebar).

Finding Customers

Look for small projects first. Easier to complete some projects and build a portfolio.

Consider partnering with other small firms to build relationships.

Have a blog. Prove that you're well-spoken, smart, and thing about interesting things.

Have your principles do sales. Customers want to talk to the people who are ultimately responsible for the success of the project on your end.

Placement agencies can help to find projects.

Rates & Prices

"Everyone does work hourly, but it doesn't make sense to me." explained an audience member. Reusable work seems to make more sense to sell on a project basis.

User-interactivity: Better off billing hourly since people generally don't know what they want when they're starting.

If you're "a person on the team" consulting, hourly works well.

Fixed bids seem to work better with government and large companies who are used to bidding. But be sure to contractually lock down the deliverables.

Fixed bid requires a closer eye on the scope / more project management.

Hybrid: Do an hourly project to determine requirements. Then put together an estimate for a fixed-bid project.

Scope Creep

What to do? Get new customers if you're doing fixed-bid work. For hourly, keep billing them.

Determine the customer's budget when determining an appropriate scope/bid.

Don't change features during each iteration. Write down and hold features until the next round.

Fire them.

Raise prices until they fire you.

Do a bad job until they fire you?

You can fire customers, and you can find new work. However, even difficult customers can be dealt with if you work with them.

Tools and Work Environment

Coffee

Good Accountant

Good Lawyer - Dahl uses NewCouncil.com

IRC or Campfire - Especially great when working contractors.

Basecamp for Development - Audience member: "Where programming project go to die."

Bug Tracker

Location: Spare bedroom? Basement? Office? Whatever works for you and your team. Some developers can't stand an office setting. Others work much better face to face.

"If you really need to know something from a client, pick up a phone."

Consulting vs Products

"I find myself wanting to work on my own projects, but need to focus on paying the bills [through consulting]." Audience member.

Product development is really alluring. Tough to balance with consulting.

Find some efficiencies through reuse of code (almost a product) with similar clients.

Cash Flow

"Consulting makes me bipolar." Audience member.

Checks don't come in on a steady basis.

Figure out your baseline expense and cover that. Then aim for a huge padding above that.

Selection is important. Find clients who pay and pay on time.

Get some money up front. Discounts for early payment is mixed.

Winning Contracts

Clients are most concerned about whether they can trust you.

Improving Customers

Bill appropriate prices for your value.

Building a Reputation

Do good work.

Have a blog.

Be known in the developer community.

Establish a niche. (Ex. Ruby on Rails)

Size

How big do you want to be?

Each person makes the team different and dynamics more difficult.

Quality vs Profits

Important question. You can't compromise.

To be an excellent firm, you have to do excellent work.

Similarly to Craigslist GumTree is powered by MySQL but unlike craigslist it looks like they are shy in tuning their MySQL Full Text Search index configuration and setting proper ft_min_word_len value. Searching for Audi A6 will give you a lot of Audi with different model numbers. Searching just for A6 gives no results at all. At the same time we can find V40 which means ft_min_word_len was adjusted from default value of 4 which probably had even worse search quality to value 3.

CraigsList seems to be using value 2 because it is able to find A6 but still fails to find data with 1 character keyword, say Mazda 3

Gumtree also seems to have another issue - as said on their web site when you post an item it takes up to 3-4 hours for items to become visible in search results. I'm wondering if that is replication lag or issues with full text search index updates as I can't imagine this being user experience you would desire.

In general I think both of this sites have the same mistake (or shortcut) in MySQL Full Text Search configuration - relaying on minimum keyword length while their application has use cases when search for short keywords make sense.

It is much more reasonable to look at frequencies at keywords not their length and if you happen to have some very frequent keywords you can't afford to index for performance or search quality reasons you better analyze word frequencies and build stop word list which matches your application. For example A6 unlikely needs to be stop word even if it is short while IN surely needs to be. Besides general terms as in you may have your application specific stop words such as com or html.

In general performance should be the only thing which forces you to have stop word, as you can see Google for example has none, even searching for a gives some results (Though of course google takes other kinds of shortcuts) This however is frequently not the case with MySQL Full Text Search which both will skip to frequent keywords in natural language search and because it is using frequency ranking indexing too frequent keywords can add noise and actually get relevance worse.

Looking at alternative solution, which we're often using with MySQL - Sphinx Search we still tend to use stop word list for performance reasons, but it is normally good enough to keep it very short. Plus as in new versions you can set the time limit on query execution it is rather safe to search a very complex query and just get partial results if it can't complete in time. From Relevance standpoint stop words rarely cause problems with sphinx because it uses word position based ranking not just frequency based ranking by default which means if you're searching for a the the documents which contain this strange phrase will be ranked on top rather than those which just contain a lot of a and a lot of the articles.

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Instant Money Reports

The book is called Instant Money Reports and sells for $37. It has one of those annoying long sales letters which I dislike but as Matthew kindly sent me the book directly, I didn't have to read any of it :-)

I did flick through it however and I must say I think the sales letter itself is a little vague. He emphasises a wealth-creating system but almost mentions the reports' part as an afterthought - it would be easy to miss. I think he would be better off clarifying that this is all about writing reports for profit and talk less about a generic wealth system'.

The reason I say this is that there are many ways of making money online but writing is not for everybody. There are a ton of people out there for whom English is not a first language or they simply find it hard to write. So this is not necessarily a great option if you are one of those people, where as affiliate marketing may be better for example.

Content of the Book

It is a standard PDF-ebook, weighing in at 89 pages, and split into four major sections:

1. Your Report Topic
2. Gathering Information
3. Your Info-Product
4. Make Money

With a fairly long ebook such as this you are not likely to read it in one sitting so it would have been nice if PDF bookmarks had been inserted. You can see these in action in my own WordPress ebook.

Technical niggles aside, I'll now review the actual content of the book itself:

Part 1 - Your Report Topic

Matthew goes into quite a bit of detail about picking a topic for your reports. He describes the various kinds of topics and the way they tend to generate income (an initial rush vs a steady stream for example) and explains when to use the various kinds of topics.

There is a strong focus on profitability within this ebook. Matthew is touting report writing as a standalone business and encourages you to think about how you can branch out within a niche and eventually dominate it so that you can be regarded as an expert within the niche. This is something I did not really think of with my own ebook - I just got an idea and went with it on the spur of the moment.

He also identifies key ingredients that are necessary in any report, such as popularity and goes into depth to help you ascertain if your chosen topic has these ingredients. This is basically the research phase of your ebook - get it wrong and you may be doing a lot of work for nothing so it's nice to see this area covered in such detail. For instance, recall how recently I did a case study of a niche site and I pointed out that perhaps the site would not get much traffic due to a poor choice of topic.

At the end of this section there are some practical tests for you to run against your chosen report topic for you to determine whether or not it is a viable one. This is a nice touch which encourages the reader to actually DO something with the information in the book rather than just reading it and then forgetting about it.

Click here to buy Instant Money Reports for $37

Part 2 - Gathering Information

I think one of the golden rules to selling anything online is giving people what they actually want as opposed to what you think they need. I've had this message drummed into me a lot recently as I was being told the same thing for the Teaching Sells course that I am working through.

This section of the book gives workable methods for figuring out exactly what it is that your market wants rather than you having to resort to guesswork. This again is something I simply didn't do with my own ebook.

What I also like about this section is that the methods in here can be applied to all sorts of things such as what to write about on your blog for example, and is not just applicable to writing ebooks. I'm also going to use these methods to determine exactly what to teach in the course I am developing for Teaching Sells. I really need to do a blog post about that shortly

Once you have figured out what the market wants, Matthew suggests that it is then your job to answer the biggest questions that they have. At this point I think many people can fall over. You see the Internet is full of information - we have an information overload and in all honesty an Internet savvy person could probably find the answer to any question they have absolutely free starting with Google.

So of course some people believe that because the information is freely available that nobody will pay for it. Not true! Most people don't have time to wade through all the information, to weed out the crap - and that's where you (and me) come in. The average surfer can't be bothered to look for it all himself.

What Matthew does in this book is show exactly where to find the information you need to answer the questions being asked by your target market. If research is not your strong point it will be after reading this chapter! I thought I was pretty wise when it comes to the Internet but there is a ton of resources in this chapter that I had never heard of before.

Click here to buy Instant Money Reports for $37

Part 3 - Your Info-Product

This section of the book is all about the physical production of your report. Matthew starts by giving some practical advice on the organisation of the body of the report, ways of dealing with writers block and so on.

He also covers how to write a proper introduction for the report, the conclusion, and various finishing touches such as copyright and disclaimers.

This section also discusses how to increase the perceived value of your ebook and additional monetization via affiliate links.

Next up we have the packaging - how to actually turn your report into downloadable PDF file and then how to grant usage rights to the users. This is something I did not consider with my ebook but as a free offering it is not so important. However, it is very important if you intend to sell your report and Matthew goes into great detail about licensing.

Part 4 - Make Money

This part starts of with the sales message that accompanies your report so it is really lessons in sales copy. For example, apparently its very bad to use the word buy' in your sales copy which is just what I have done within this review, oops!

There is a lot of information here about appealing to the emotional needs of your audience - giving them what they want rather than what they need. I skimmed over a lot of this stuff as I'm not really likely to be creating long sales letters anytime soon.

I was far more interested in the practical aspects of setting up a secure download page. One of the services that Matthew recommends is called E-Junkie which is spooky because they just so happened to take out an ad with me today! He also explains how to provide instant delivery of your report even if you do not have your own website or blog.

The very last section in this ebook is the most valuable to me - here Matthew shows exactly how to market your report on popular forums such as the Warrior Forum which just happens to be one of the action points that I had in my project page for my ebook. My problem is that I find the Warrior Forum intimidating and you only get one chance to promote something so of course I don't want to screw it up! The information in this ebook is brilliant here.

As well as forums, he also discusses ebay (another one of my marketing todo's!), something called Lulu which I had never heard of, classified ad sites such as Craigslist, and again, lots more that I didn't know about. I will be re-reading part 4 of this book several times over the next couple of weeks as I continue with my ebook marketing.

Click here to buy Instant Money Reports for $37

Action Points to Take Away

I really should have read this book a couple of months back before I started on my own ebook project. The problem is that it was just a spur of the moment idea and I wanted to run with it while the enthusiasm was there. To be honest, it's been out for quite a few weeks now and has already been updated so many times that I don't think there is much point in applying what I have learned here to my current ebook. So instead, I will take these action points and apply them to my next one:

• Do better research to determine a good topic - look at profitability potential
• Find out exactly what the market wants to know rather than assuming that I know what they want to read
• Research online sources of information rather than just relying on my own knowledge which may be flawed.
• Add polish to the content thereby increasing perceived value
• Put more effort into crafting a good title for the book
• Write a proper copyright and disclaimer section
• Fully investigate the security options when turning into a PDF file
• Provide a secure downloadable paid ebook and not just a feebie next time!
• Sell the book in forums such as the Warrior Forum
• Sell the book on eBay
• Sell the book on classified ad sites

Conclusion

I was given the book free but if I had paid $37 for it I would be very happy. My favourite part was the last one all about how to market the book and make the most money from it. I didn't much like the stuff about the sales page but that's just me, and not because it's bad information.

I suppose I should also mention the extras. The book has some bonus reports such as a 26-page guide to cashing in on Craigslist which looks interesting and there is a toolbox' which is basically a PDF with lots of worksheets, diagrams etc to help you clarify your thoughts. This toolbox is referred to throughout the text of the ebook.

There is also a 30 day money back guarantee, as you would expect these days :-)

With my current ebook the main revenue stream is an affiliate link to my hosting company Bluehost which pays out $65 per referral. Obviously just a single extra sale that comes from the information in Matthews book would pay for the book almost twice over.

Over the next few weeks I plan to do a lot more marketing of my ebook (as well as work on some other projects) and I will certainly be referring back to part 4 of Instant Money Reports to make sure I get it right.

I am an affiliate for this ebook so obviously I want you guys to go out and buy it but I really do recommend this one, there is so much information in it that I simply didn't know and it is written in an extremely practical way so that it can actually be applied.

Click here to buy Instant Money Reports for $37

Maybe it's time to up the bid? 12 cents, anyone? While you ponder which price is right, here's an interview with Famesource's Vartazarian:

And an ad for Famesource:

Although it seems counterintuitive, it's the law of supply and demand. As the TV audience shrinks, advertisers have to buy more ads to reach their target number of viewers. But that increased demand for ad slots creates scarcity, which in turn leads to rate hikes.

But if you read closely, it turns out that ad prices haven't really increased by very much at all. Says Sanders:

Advertisers use a measure known as cpm, or the cost to reach each 1,000 viewers, on which to base advertising rates.

If you're basing your advertising rates on cpm, then prices will naturally rise as ratings fall: it's got nothing to do with supply and demand at all. Simply keeping the cost of a 30-second slot constant in dollar terms would equate to a rise of 16% in cpm terms if ratings fall by 14%. If the cost of a slot merely goes up in line with inflation, then that's your 18% cpm rate hike right there.

In other words, what Sanders has discovered is not the price of ad slots going up, it's just the price of ad slots staying constant, even as the number of viewers they reach goes down.

This doesn't actually surprise me. Network TV is the last mass medium, and certain advertisers, like Procter & Gamble or McDonald's, need a mass medium for their ads. Jeff Jarvis says that they should "work a little harder and move past the one-stop-shopping of TV and upfront to put together networks online" - but the fact is that we're still a very, very, very long way from the point at which a FMCG manufacturer can achieve the requisite level of brand awareness with any kind of online campaign, no matter how expensive.

On a cpm basis, then, I reckon TV ad rates are going to continue to rise for the foreseeable future. In turn, that will be good for newspapers and websites, whose ad rates will look increasingly attractive in comparison. Everybody wins - except, maybe, the advertisers.

An Advertising Recession?

Another New Ad Medium

Watching the Audience

Information Will Be Free

Since the dawn of the internet, "content wants to be free" has been the rallying cry of digital evangelists. But those who wanted to charge for content could always point to a shining example: the Wall Street Journal, with its 1 million online subscribers and $65 million in digital subscription revenue.

That will all change in 2008. Rupert Murdoch, whose News Corp. recently completed its $5 billion acquisition of Dow Jones, plans to set WSJ.com free, judging from several fairly unequivocal public pronouncements.

Despite the short-term loss of subscription revenue, "long term, it's kind of a slam dunk," says Mike Vorhaus, managing director at the consulting firm Frank N. Magid Associates. The money that is made from selling ads that reach a much larger audience will more than make up for losses, he adds.

The New York Times had a similar epiphany in September, when it shut down TimesSelect, its premium content service. But business news seemed to be one place where online subscriptions could still be sold successfully.

The Journal's move, however, will change the economics for competitors such as the Financial Times, which also charges a fee. "If the Wall Street Journal goes free, I suspect [FT.com] will also do it," says John Morton, an independent newspaper-industry analyst in Silver Spring, Maryland.

Companies that provide data rather than news may perhaps be more immune to the live-free-or-die fever, but then again, they might not.

ConsumerReports.org has been another success to date; just this month, it signed up its 3 millionth paid subscriber. But Jarvis predicts that free content will triumph eventually in that arena as well.

"Somebody's going to come along and pull a Craigslist on them," says Jarvis, referring to the listings site that has decimated newspapers' classified sections. "It's the kind of data you can get from your fellow customers."

Time to Part Ways?