luni, 19 decembrie 2011

How Negative Emotion Could Hurt Your Rankings

How Negative Emotion Could Hurt Your Rankings


How Negative Emotion Could Hurt Your Rankings

Posted: 18 Dec 2011 01:14 PM PST

Posted by Carson Ward

Angry Red Google Places Pin

If I were to post a restaurant review right here on the SEOmoz blog with the place's name, address, phone number, and a link to its web site, what message would it send? Those of us who have been working in the SEO field for a while might once have immediately responded that citations and links are like a “votes” or “endorsements."  However, what if those citations and links are negative – and what if Google can tell the difference?

Suppose I wrote a blog post about a pizza place I visited last weekend, saying that it had the worst pizza in Seattle. It was too expensive, the portion size was too small, and the staff was rude. In the absence of a star rating, does it make sense for Google to count my scathing criticism as just another local citation to boost the restaurant’s placement?

The Name of a Thing Is Not the Thing

For a modern search engine, it is critical to understand both user intent behind a query and the contextual meaning of a word. It must, for example, use contextual clues to determine whether the word “jack” refers to the device I use to change a tire, the common male name, or the slang verb meaning "to steal." Google applies stylometry (the study of language style) in the disambiguation of word and meaning – and they're getting much, much better at it.

Stylometry can also reveal a surprising amount about a person or document. The way that one uses pronouns, for example, could be used to guess whether he or she is telling the truth, prone to depression, or a psychopath with no empathy. On a much more intuitive and basic level, the words we use relay our positive or negative feelings towards a given object.

Google Knows When You’re (Un)Happy

There are dozens of potential uses of stylometry and lexical analysis to improve search quality. Just as Google uses surrounding words to identify what kind of jack I’m talking about, the search engine could also use context to determine whether the adjectives I use in reference to a product, place, or post are positive or negative. Consider the following sentiment analysis patent, filed in 2007 and issued in July of 2011:

Patent No. US 7,987,188 B2 – Domain-Specific Sentiment Classification

“For example the word “small” usually indicates positive sentiment when describing a portable electronic device but can indicate negative sentiment when used to describe the size of a portion served by a restaurant.”

The patent goes on to describe a system that solves this problem by determining what the author is talking about, and then understanding whether the sentiment is positive, negative, or neutral. As with most factors in Google’s algorithm, we can only speculate on the extent to which Google applies this system. Perhaps Rand was on to something similar when he suggested authenticity and passion could be a signal that Google considers.

My sense is that search engines still lack the processing power to analyze sentiment on a large scale. Microsoft’s related patent seems to confirm that (at one point) they felt the same. However, the language of the Google patent and my own experience leads me to believe that Google has been using sentiment analysis on at least local and product results for a while now.

Implications for Local SEO

Over the last several years, the SEO community has proven that citations are like links for local businesses. I will go one step further and suggest that local citations are now analyzed for their sentiment. This allows Google to understand reviews regardless of whether or not the source includes a standard rating scale (e.g. stars). It would follow that positive citations would improve local rankings, while negative citations could harm rankings. To illustrate, consider the following search results: 

Google Maps Oyster Search

 

Note the sentiment-phrases that Google is pulling beneath the places. The Walrus and the Carpenter is ranking quite well, especially considering how far away it is from Seattle’s center. Yes, the reviews are quite positive – but not one of them mentions “steak tartare.”

Seattle Times' Review of The Walrus and the Carpenter

Could it be that both of these peculiarities result partially from this positive review on The Seattle Times’ Top 10 Restaurants? Is it more than coincidental that the phrase “small plates,” mentioned three times in the linked review, is also listed on the Google Maps/Places pages?

Hundreds of examples prove that Google is picking important sentiments from external websites – not just from review sites like Yelp, but also from sites that don’t necessarily focus on user-generated reviews. Further monitoring over time may be required to properly assess impact on local rankings. It seems clear to me, though, that Google would not go to the effort of determining whether a sentiment was positive or negative and then apply for a patent unless the information is being used in some way.

Getting a site listed in relevant local directories has definite value, but what really matters in improving your local rankings may be sentiment that reviewers express. Furthermore, evidence suggests Google no longer needs an explicit rating to understand how a user feels.

The Future of Links, Brands, and SEO

I doubt very much that even Google has the server power required to perform resource-intensive sentiment analysis on every link – yet. Google’s feeling decoder could easily be tweaked to understand sentiment related to links, domains, brands, articles, and more. Consider the evidence here, Google’s ever-growing powers of lexical understanding, and the potential to improve search quality; the influence of opinion and feeling on search results appears inevitable.

Building a positive relationship is often more difficult than creating negative link bait, but positive relationships are almost always more valuable. While trolling for links might be fun for some, the harsh responses may end up hurting more than feelings. Those concerned with future-proof SEO techniques would be wise to avoid references with negative context or sentiment and instead seek real and positive coverage.


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Will House Republicans Allow Taxes To Go Up On 160 Million Americans?

The White House Your Daily Snapshot for
Monday, Dec. 19, 2011
 

Will House Republicans Allow Taxes To Go Up On 160 Million Americans?

The President believes this is a make or break moment for the middle class, and that's why he is determined to protect the payroll tax cut for millions of Americans. It's time for House Republicans to listen to the American people, and their colleagues in the Senate, and agree to the bipartisan agreement to extend the payroll tax cut passed in the Senate.

See why the payroll tax cut is important for families, businesses and the economy:

In Case You Missed It

Here are some of the top stories from the White House blog:

Statement by White House Communications Director Dan Pfeiffer
President Obama said that Congress cannot go home without preventing a tax increase on 160 million hardworking Americans, and the deal announced tonight meets that test.

Extending the Payroll Tax Cut
On Saturday, President Obama took a moment to address reporters on the plan from Congress to extend the payroll tax cut.

Weekly Address: Honoring Those Who Served in Iraq
President Obama expresses gratitude for the historic achievements of the brave men and women who have served in the war in Iraq -- and welcomes our troops home as we mark the official end to the war.

Today's Schedule

All times are Eastern Standard Time (EST).

10:15: The President receives the Presidential Daily Briefing

10:45: The President meets with senior advisors 

1:45 PM: Press Briefing by Press Secretary Jay Carney WhiteHouse.gov/live 

WhiteHouse.gov/live Indicates that the event will be live-streamed on WhiteHouse.gov/Live

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Seth's Blog : No one ever bought anything in an elevator

No one ever bought anything in an elevator

The purpose of an elevator pitch isn't to close the sale.

The goal isn't even to give a short, accurate, Wikipedia-standard description of you or your project.

And the idea of using vacuous, vague words to craft a bland mission statement is dumb.

No, the purpose of an elevator pitch is to describe a situation or solution so compelling that the person you're with wants to hear more even after the elevator ride is over.

 

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duminică, 18 decembrie 2011

Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis

Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis


"Too Big to Complete"; Chinese Replica of Manhattan May Need Bailout; Home Prices Drop in 49 of 70 Cities; Banks Under-Report Debt

Posted: 18 Dec 2011 10:45 PM PST

A Chinese project to make a copy of Manhattan, complete with Rockefeller and Lincoln centers is not going well. The replica city is about an hour from Beijing and may need a bailout.

Elsewhere, real estate prices have fallen like a rock in Shanghai, and China's banks may be understating their exposure to local borrowing gone haywire.

Local Debts Dwarf Official Data

Bloomberg reports China Debts on Local Projects Dwarf Official Data
A copy of Manhattan, complete with Rockefeller and Lincoln centers and what passes for the Hudson River, is under construction an hour's train ride from Beijing. And like New York City in the 1970s, it may need a bailout.

Debt accumulated by companies financing local governments such as Tianjin, home to the New York lookalike project, is rising, a survey of Chinese-language bond prospectuses issued this year indicates. It also suggests the total owed by all such entities likely dwarfs the count by China's national auditor and figures disclosed by banks.

Bloomberg News tallied the debt disclosed by all 231 local government financing companies that sold bonds, notes or commercial paper through Dec. 10 this year. The total amounted to 3.96 trillion yuan ($622 billion), mostly in bank loans, more than the current size of the European bailout fund.

There are 6,576 of such entities across China, according to a June count by the National Audit Office, which put their total debt at 4.97 trillion yuan. That means the 231 borrowers studied by Bloomberg have alone amassed more than three-quarters of the overall debt.

Data Disparities

For example, China Construction Bank Corp. (939), the world's second-biggest bank by market value, has lending to those 113 local government borrowers of 250 billion yuan. That's 43 percent of the 580 billion yuan the bank said it had extended in loans to all such borrowers at the end of June.

The bank has untapped lines of credit to the vehicles of a further 341 billion yuan.

Disparities like this suggest lenders may have bigger risks than they've disclosed publicly, says Charlene Chu, a banking analyst at Fitch Ratings Ltd. in Beijing.

'Too Big to Complete'

Yao Wei, an economist at Societe Generale (GLE) SA in Hong Kong, says another 7 trillion yuan of debt will be needed to finish projects in the government's five-year plan through 2015.

"At some point the central government will realize this is too big to complete," said Yao.
Home Prices Drop in 49 of 70 Cities

Please consider China November Home Prices Are Worst of Year
New home prices dropped from the previous month in 49 of the cities monitored by the government, compared with 33 posting decreases in October, the national statistics bureau said in a statement on its website yesterday. Only five cities had gains in home prices, according to the statement.

"It's more and more clear that home prices are falling around the country," said Shen Jian-guang, a Hong Kong-based economist at Mizuho Securities Asia Ltd. "It's still the critical stage of China's property curbs, so the government doesn't want to send any signals of easing of those policies too early as it may reverse the trend."

Chinese developers will face challenges over the next 12 to 18 months including slowing sales, tight bank credit and downward pressure on prices and profit margins, Moody's Investors Services said in a Dec. 15 report.
Laughable Official Reporting

Officially, "New home prices in China's four major cities of Shanghai, Beijing, Shenzhen and Guangzhou each retreated 0.3 percent from October."

I find that preposterous given widespread price-decline reports of 35% or more.

For additional information, please see ...


Devastating Trade War Looms as China Skids Towards Hard Landing

As China Skids Towards Hard Landing Hot Money Outflows Increase. Those betting on a huge appreciation of the Yuan need to reconsider.

Worse yet, the risk of a devastating trade war with China is on the rise. For details, please consider China to Impose Anti-Dumping Duties on GM; "Fair Trade" Idea is Self-Serving Scam; Proposal to Stop "Free Sunlight" Gains Support From Mitt Romney

Mike "Mish" Shedlock
http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com
Click Here To Scroll Thru My Recent Post List


EU Leaders Endlessly Play "Ring-Around-the-Rosie"; Finance Ministers Seek IMF Funding Deal; EU demands £25bn lifeline from the UK

Posted: 18 Dec 2011 08:08 PM PST

Like a never ending game of "Ring-Around-the-Rosie", European leaders switch from one poor funding idea, to another, to another, around in an endless circle of dead-end propositions then back where they started. The "posie" is now back in the IMF's pocket.



Kate Greenaway's Mother Goose illustration

Finance Ministers Seek IMF Funding Deal

Remember the idea to leverage up the EFSF with a "loan" from the IMF? It's magically back, in spite of the fact the EFSF idea itself appears dead.

Bloomberg reports Europe Finance Ministers Seek Crisis IMF Funding Deal as Confidence Wanes
European finance ministers today will seek to meet a self-imposed deadline for drawing additional aid to the debt crisis and to form new budget rules as investor confidence that a comprehensive solution is achievable wanes.

Euro-area finance ministers will hold a conference call at 3:30 p.m. Brussels time to discuss 200 billion euros ($261 billion) in additional funding through the International Monetary Fund and the mechanics of a so-called fiscal compact that was negotiated at a Dec. 9 European Union summit, according to two people familiar with the planning.

Euro-area officials aim to meet their deadline for today to arrange the IMF loans. The package entails about 150 billion euros pledged by euro-area central banks and another 50 billion euros to be contributed by non-euro EU states. The euro-area ministers will be joined in the call by their EU counterparts to thrash out measures including the decision-making process of the bloc's permanent bailout fund, the European Stability Mechanism, one of the people said.

ECB Divisions

The treaty, to be hammered out by late January and signed in early March, will take effect once ratified by nine of the 17 euro-area countries. EU states outside the euro will join as they ratify, with the U.K. alone so far in refusing to sign up.

Departing ECB Executive Board Member Juergen Stark revealed divisions in the central bank on measures to ease market turmoil with bond purchases. He told German magazine WirtschaftsWoche in an interview that his decision to leave the ECB derived from his disappointment over "how this monetary union has evolved." He criticized the bond purchases.

ECB President Mario Draghi has signaled that the Frankfurt- based bank won't step up its bond-purchase program, leaving euro-area governments on their own to resolve the crisis.
Pet Lies

The paragraph above in red by Bloomberg is completely misleading if not blatantly inaccurate.

  1. As I pointed out with thanks to reader Janne from Finland, Hell Will Freeze Over Before Finland Signs Treaty.
  2. Another Look at the UK "In Isolation": Update on Sweden (from Sweden)
  3. Crumbling of Comprehensive Solution No. 4: Crumbling of Comprehensive Solution No. 4; Treaty "Legally Doubtful"; Cracks and Splinters Everywhere; Repeated "Pet Lies" by EC President Van Rompuy
  4. Sarkozy is going to lose the next French election and Socialist challenger François Hollande Would Renegotiate EU Deal.


EU demands £25bn lifeline from the UK

The Telegraph reports EU demands £25bn lifeline from the UK
European finance ministers will aim to agree a new €200 billion (£167.7 billion) loan to the International Monetary Fund as part of a deal to save the single currency.

Three quarters of the money is expected to come from eurozone members, but Britain will also be asked to provide funds.

Figures suggest European Union officials expect British taxpayers to be the second largest contributor. The Prime Minister has repeatedly promised not to provide any extra funding for the IMF for the specific purpose of saving the euro and Britain is already liable for £12 billion of loans and guarantees to Ireland, Greece and Portugal.

Earlier this month, EU countries set today as the deadline to raise up to €200  billion in new loans for the IMF to deal with the eurozone crisis.

Finance ministers will hold a conference call in an attempt to reach agreement on the war chest.

An EU official said Britain was still expected to contribute €30.9 billion (£25.9 billion), leaving the country as the second biggest contributor to the new IMF fund behind Germany and equal with France.
Cameron Should Tell EU to Shove It

Prime Minister David Cameron is to tell the EU where to shove it. That would be the proper response in any case, but it's especially appropriate now given how Germany and France conspired against the UK in the Merkozy treaty.

That is something French President Nicolas Sarkozy should have thought about before opening snubbing Cameron.

Furthermore, if the UK does not pony up, I strongly suspect they will not be alone. Finally, any nation that does pony up on the basis it is a "loan" should have full expectation the word is really "gift" as defaults are coming.

Mike "Mish" Shedlock
http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com
Click Here To Scroll Thru My Recent Post List


Buyer's Remorse; Record Volume of Returns Before Christmas; $217 Billion Returns Expected, Up 14%

Posted: 18 Dec 2011 04:08 PM PST

Christmas shopping is up, but so are returns, before Santa even delivers them. This is not a case of wrong size or bad color, but rather "I found a better deal or I spent too much".

MSN Money says Take that back! Returns are big for the holidays
People who rushed to snag discounts on TVs, toys and other gifts are quickly returning them for much-needed cash. The shopping season started out strong for stores, but it looks like the spending binge has given way to a holiday hangover.

Return rates spiked when the Great Recession struck and have stayed high. For every dollar stores take in this holiday season, they'll have to give back 9.9 cents in returns, up from 9.8 last year. In better economic times, it's about 7 cents.

Returns are typically more associated with January than December. After all, that hot pink sweater with yellow stars on the sleeves may not be exactly what your sister had in mind. But these days, more is going back before it ever gets to Santa's sack.

"When the bills come in and the money isn't there, you have to return," says Jennifer Kersten, 33, of Miami. She spent $300 the day after Thanksgiving on books, movies and clothes for her nephews. Last week she returned half of it.

Some reasons for the many unhappy returns:

Shoppers are binging on big discounts. Stores are desperate to get people in the door. But the same shoppers who find a "60 percent off" tag too good to resist may realize at home that they busted the budget.

Stores have made it easier to take things back. Nordstrom is letting online shoppers return items at no extra charge this year. It used to charge $6. Other stores are offering more time to return or rolling out "no questions asked" policies — no tag or receipt required. But that can backfire.

"Spurring more returns wasn't part of the plan," says Al Sambar, a retail strategist for consulting firm Kurt Salmon.

Stores are undercutting each other in a tough economy. Wanda Vazquez spent $39.99 at a New York Target on iPad speakers for her 12-year-old daughter, then returned them when she found something similar for $16.99 at Marshalls.

Consumer electronics in particular are being returned at a rapid clip. Stores and manufacturers are expected to spend $17 billion reboxing, repairing, restocking and reselling electronics this year, up 21 percent from four years ago.
$217 Billion Returns Expected

ABC Nightly News has an interesting video Stores see huge volume of returns

Returns are expected to reach $217 billion, up 14% from last year.

It costs retailers 16% to restock a sweater, but as much as 50% on computers, if software has to be virus-checked and reinstalled.

Sales may be up, but what about profits?

Mike "Mish" Shedlock
http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com
Click Here To Scroll Thru My Recent Post List


9 Things to Say Goodbye To, Including Privacy and Free Speech

Posted: 18 Dec 2011 02:35 PM PST

Changes are coming. Many things we know and love will soon be gone, just as happened to the 8-track player, the buggy whip, and MS DOS. Unfortunately, we are also losing some things we cannot afford to.

In an article written about a year ago, Rense says Changes Are Coming - Things We'll Be Saying Goodbye To. I added one key item to the list.
Things We'll Be Saying Goodbye To

1. The Post Office. Get ready to imagine a world without the post office. They are so deeply in financial trouble that there is probably no way to sustain it long term. Email, Fed Ex, and UPS have just about wiped out the minimum revenue needed to keep the post office alive. Most of your mail every day is junk mail and bills.

2. The Check. Britain is already laying the groundwork to do away with checks by 2018. It costs the financial system billions of dollars a year to process checks. Plastic cards and online transactions will lead to the eventual demise of the check. This plays right into the death of the post office. If you never paid your bills by mail and never received them by mail, the post office would absolutely go out of business.

3. The Newspaper. The younger generation simply doesn't read the newspaper. They certainly don't subscribe to a daily delivered print edition. That may go the way of the milkman and the laundry man. As for reading the paper online, get ready to pay for it. The rise in mobile Internet devices and e-readers has caused all the newspaper and magazine publishers to form an alliance. They have met with Apple, Amazon, and the major cell phone companies to develop a model for paid subscription services.

4. The Book. You say you will never give up the physical book that you hold in your hand and turn the literal pages. I said the same thing about downloading music from iTunes. I wanted my hard copy CD. But I quickly changed my mind when I discovered that I could get albums for half the price without ever leaving home to get the latest music. The same thing will happen with books. You can browse a bookstore online and even read a preview chapter before you buy. And the price is less than half that of a real book. And think of the convenience! Once you start flicking your fingers on the screen instead of the book, you find that you are lost in the story, can't wait to see what happens next, and you forget that you're holding a gadget instead of a book.

5. The Land Line Telephone. Unless you have a large family and make a lot of local calls, you don't need it anymore. Most people keep it simply because they've always had it. But you are paying double charges for that extra service. All the cell phone companies will let you call customers using the same cell provider for no charge against your minutes.

6. Music. This is one of the saddest parts of the change story. The music industry is dying a slow death. Not just because of illegal downloading. It's the lack of innovative new music being given a chance to get to the people who would like to hear it. Greed and corruption is the problem. The record labels and the radio conglomerates are simply self-destructing. Over 40% of the music purchased today is "catalog items," meaning traditional music that the public is familiar with. Older established artists. This is also true on the live concert circuit. To explore this fascinating and disturbing topic further, check out the book, "Appetite for Self-Destruction" by Steve Knopper, and the video documentary, "Before the Music Dies."

7. Television. Revenues to the networks are down dramatically. Not just because of the economy. People are watching TV and movies streamed from their computers. And they're playing games and doing lots of other things that take up the time that used to be spent watching TV. Prime time shows have degenerated down to lower than the lowest common denominator. Cable rates are skyrocketing and commercials run about every 4 minutes and 30 seconds. I say good riddance to most of it. It's time for the cable companies to be put out of our misery. Let the people choose what they want to watch online and through Netflix.

8. The "Things" That You Own. Many of the very possessions that we used to own are still in our lives, but we may not actually own them in the future. They may simply reside in "the cloud." Today your computer has a hard drive and you store your pictures, music, movies, and documents. Your software is on a CD or DVD, and you can always re-install it if need be. But all of that is changing. Apple, Microsoft, and Google are all finishing up their latest "cloud services." That means that when you turn on a computer, the Internet will be built into the operating system. So, Windows, Google, and the Mac OS will be tied straight into the Internet. If you click an icon, it will open something in the Internet cloud. If you save something, it will be saved to the cloud. And you may pay a monthly subscription fee to the cloud provider.

In this virtual world, you can access your music or your books, or your whatever from any laptop or handheld device. That's the good news. But, will you actually own any of this "stuff" or will it all be able to disappear at any moment in a big "Poof?" Will most of the things in our lives be disposable and whimsical? It makes you want to run to the closet and pull out that photo album, grab a book from the shelf, or open up a CD case and pull out the insert.

9. Privacy. If there ever was a concept that we can look back on nostalgically, it would be privacy. That's gone. It's been gone for a long time anyway. There are cameras on the street, in most of the buildings, and even built into your computer and cell phone. But you can be sure that 24/7, "They" know who you are and where you are, right down to the GPS coordinates, and the Google Street View. If you buy something, your habit is put into a zillion profiles, and your ads will change to reflect those habits. And "They" will try to get you to buy something else. Again and again. All we will have that can't be changed are memories.
Point-by-Point Comments

1. Delivery will not go away, but the post office as we know it today will. Look for delivery to be privatized and for a big push to pay bills online. Here are a couple of links to consider: Facing Bankruptcy, US Postal Service Plans Unprecedented Cuts To First Class Mail. Also consider Do We Need the Postal Service.

2. Good riddance to the check, and to the penny as well. But it may be a number of years before check-writing goes on the ash-heap of history.

3. Newspapers are surely dieing a slow death, but will they go away totally?

4. The bookstore dies before printed books, but both have had it. It's difficult to see how brick-and-mortar bookstores with all their overhead can compete with Amazon. Eventually, physical printing and all the overhead and costs will give way to cheaper and easier to read media. Those who try Kindle, love it.

5. Land lines do not make sense for most people. I have one because they offer a better connection for podcasts than mobile phones or skype.

6. Music itself will not die even though its distribution mechanism continues to evolve.

7. Television will not die either even though television as we know it will certainly evolve in seen and unseen ways.  3D projection TVs and other innovations will be more than enough to keep the media alive and well for decades. The idea the laptop computers and gaming will replace TVs is silliness.

8. I look forward to the time that much of the software I run is not on my computer but rather in the cloud. It will happen.

9. Loss of privacy with cameras everywhere is sad and frightening.

Predator Drone Spying

The Mail Online reports Local cops using Predator drones to spy on Americans in their own backyards
The same unmanned drones that the CIA and the American military uses to kill terrorists in Pakistan and gather intelligence on militants in Afghanistan are being deployed by local cops to spy on US citizens at home.

Increasingly, the federal government and local police agencies are using those drones to spy criminal suspects in America with sophisticated high-resolution cameras, heat sensors and radar. All of it comes without a warrant.

'There is no question that this could become something that people will regret,' former Rep Jane Harman, a Democrat, told the Los Angles Times.
Loss of Free Speech

A bill in Congress with an innocuous title - Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) - threatens to do much more.
An extremely technical, low-profile bill that isn't being covered by cable news, but has nearly 1,000 registered lobbyists officially working on it: the Stop Online Piracy Act, or SOPA -- a bill with the power to fundamentally reshape the laws governing the Internet.

SOPA would imbue the federal government with broad powers to shut down whole web domains on the basis that it believes them to be associated with piracy -- without a trial or even a traditional hearing. It would provide Hollywood with powerful new legal tools to stifle transactions with websites whose existence worries the movie industry.

The bill's supporters, which also include major record labels, trial lawyers and pharmaceutical giants, call SOPA a robust effort to curb piracy of American goods online.

Opponents, however, have castigated it as an unparalleled attack on free speech online. Civil liberties advocates say SOPA would give the U.S. government the same censorship tools used in China. Those in the technology sector warn that the bill creates enormous new barriers to entry for web startups, threatening innovation and job creation. Farther afield, librarians say that under the letter of the proposed anti-piracy law, they could be jailed for simply doing their jobs.

Leahy's bill would also empower corporations to demand that payment processors, advertisers and search engines stop doing business with sites the companies believe to be dedicated to infringement. A Hollywood studio could claim a website is "dedicated to infringement," and tell Google to stop registering the website in its search results. If Google protested, the company could haul Google into court.

This new set of corporate liabilities -- known as a "private right of action" -- prompted resistance from Wall Street. Both JPMorgan Chase, which operates a major global payment processing business, and the Financial Services Roundtable, a lobbying group representing the nation's biggest banks, began pressing Congress to reject the bill, arguing that it was unfair to hold banks accountable for the sins of others. Banks and payment processors didn't want to have Hollywood telling them who to do business with.

The government's ability to shut down sites would involve federal tampering with the domestic Domain Name System -- a basic Internet building block that links numerical addresses where Internet data is stored to alphabetical URL addresses that people actually type into web browsers. The Chinese government censors the Internet for its citizens by engaging in DNS blocking, restricting access to certain domains.

Tech experts warn that giving the U.S. government such powers could hinder the functionality of many web applications, severing the connection between domain URLs and numerical data addresses that many programs rely on. It would also hamper efforts to introduce a new security system known as DNSSEC, which national security programmers have been developing for years.

"The Act would allow the government to break the Internet addressing system," wrote 108 law professors in a July letter to Congress. "The Internet's Domain Name System ("DNS") is a foundational building block upon which the Internet has been built and on which its continued functioning critically depends. The Act will have potentially catastrophic consequences for the stability and security of the DNS."

Leahy's bill has whipped Internet advocacy groups into a frenzy. Dozens of nonprofits, including the Electronic Frontier Foundation and The Center for Democracy and Technology, issued strong statements condemning the bill. Fifty venture capitalists sent a letter to the Hill warning lawmakers that Leahy's bill could cripple tech startups with absurd legal fees prompted by Hollywood. ...

Americans pay higher prescription drug prices than the citizens of any other nation, a product of strict intellectual property rules for prescription drugs. So many among the elderly and the uninsured import the same drugs at lower prices from Canada to avoid the sticker shock, a strategy advocated by both Consumer Reports
and AARP.

Though buying prescription drugs from Canada is technically illegal, the Food and Drug Administration has informally tolerated the purchases for years, provided the medicine is approved by prescription and is only for personal use.

SOPA includes a host of provisions designed to crack down on counterfeit medicine that are written broadly enough to encumber the importation of safe medicine from legitimate Canadian pharmacies. Provisions that bar the importation of "mislabeled" drugs would block a great deal of unsafe pills from making their way to the U.S., but they would also block all Canadian prescription drugs, because Canada's drug warnings don't exactly match FDA warnings.

"Our primary concerns are with the fact that non-infringing content is going to be taken down in the process of taking down infringing content," says Michael MacLeod-Ball, First Amendment counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union. "The way the bill is set up, if a site has infringing content on it ... their default reaction is going to be to take down the whole site."

While a judge has to review the Attorney General's request to take down a site, nobody from the site being targeted must be given a chance to defend themselves before the judge grants the AG's request. The AG doesn't ask a judge for a search warrant under SOPA, it requests to take down an entire website without a trial -- or even a hearing.

Under current law, any U.S. website posting infringing content has to take the song or movie down at the request of whatever company owns the copyright. But under SOPA, companies could go directly to web hosting companies and require them to take down the entire website -- not just individual songs and videos.

As a result, SOPA creates a new opening for corporate command of the Internet. Under SOPA, web hosting companies that take down legitimate websites at the behest of copyright holders would be granted blanket immunity from any liability for losses caused to those legitimate sites.

"Congress is on the verge of wrecking the greatest engine of innovation and greatest platform for democracy ever known to human kind," says David Segal, Executive Director of Demand Progress. "And for what? For the sake of propping up an ossified industry that refuses to change with the times, but happens to make a lot of campaign contributions."

My site, ZeroHedge, Calculated Risk can all be shut down if a newspaper or other cite thinks we went beyond fair use in quoting an article. Drug imports from Canada (something that ought to be legal), will be shut down as well.

This bill's real intent is not to stop piracy, but rather to hand over control of the internet to corporations.

Mike "Mish" Shedlock
http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com
Click Here To Scroll Thru My Recent Post List


[Fast Blog Finder] How you can double your link building efforts

Would you like to get two backlinks from your comment instead of the single link in a quite legitimate way?

Just use this search query in Fast Blog Finder:

"Enable CommentLuv" + "your keywords"

As you probably know the CommentLuv is a plugin that will visit the RSS feed of the blog address you provided in the URL field, find your last post and display it under your comment which means you get two backlinks instead one when your comment is approved. Great reward for your valuable comment!

And just so you know, the GOLD edition of Fast Blog Finder finds the blogs with the CommentLuv and Top Commentators plugins enabled automatically [unlike the free version where you need to enter the specific search query].

If you don't want to limit yourself in blog commenting, click this link to upgrade to 'Fast Blog Finder GOLD edition' now:

Photo
Julia Gulevich
G-Lock Software
julia@glocksoft.com

P.S In the next email I'll share with you some blog commenting ideas you may want to use when you search for blogs.






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Aaron Wall and I Debate the Open Discussion of Webspam

Aaron Wall and I Debate the Open Discussion of Webspam


Aaron Wall and I Debate the Open Discussion of Webspam

Posted: 17 Dec 2011 02:35 AM PST

Posted by randfish

In years past, I'd occasionally post about various aspects of webspam - manipulative links, cloaking, thin content, etc. In these posts, I'd use examples I'd seen - sometimes particularly egregious ones, other times more subtle offenders - both to help illustrate the points and to provide concrete evidence. It's hard to say "link spam is a big problem and Google's susceptible to it," without specific data to help back up that point, and it's much easier to brush aside generic statements than observable cases.

This came to a halt several years ago as a segment of the public SEO community derided the practice as "outing" or "snitching," and used both public and private methods of pressure to lambast and ostracize those who engaged in public discussions of webspam with specific examples. Today, there's a few rare but useful examples of public webspam discussion that slip through the cracks, including:

Seeing these, I'm hopeful that our industry is becoming more professional, less paranoid and less like a mafia. These were always the features I hated most about the SEO world on the web - that we would rarely "come together" as a group to laud progress, embrace accomplishments or conduct research (though projects like the industry survey and search ranking factors, both ours and David Mihm's local version stand out in those arenas), but that groups would unite to antagonize or attack each other.

So, it was a fun coincidence this week when Aaron and I had a chat over Twitter on this very topic, which I've Storify'd below:

There were several things I really enjoyed and appreciated about our conversation:

  • Despite the 140 character limit, it was (mostly) sensible :-)
  • No one lost their temper or turned to personal attacks (which, unfortunately, hasn't always been the case in the past and for those times when I've played a part in that, I hope Aaron accepts my apology)
  • The discussion included some humor and fun
  • Both of us clearly have a lot of respect for one another and, despite arguing vehemently on this issue, maintain both an industry and personal kinship

The disagreement, at its core, seems to be around the impacts of open webspam discussion. I think those who engage in gray/black hat manipulation (or marketing of any kind for that matter) publicly on the web shouldn't expect privacy from their fellow marketers nor from the web community as a whole. Just as we learn by studying the launch of Spotify or the customer acquisition tactics used by Dropbox, so too can we learn from those who manipulate the sensitive parts of the search engines' algorithms. And, in doing so openly, I think we help separate our profession from the practice of spam and show the broader web community that we are not a mafia focused on silencing those who expose gray/black hat, but rather a diverse set of professionals who openly acknowledge and call out bad practices.

Aaron takes the other side, believing that the more standards are imposed (formally or informally), the less opportunity will exist for those who practice SEO. Many others have taken a stance that public webspam discussion is an offense worthy of some pretty horrific insults, and I've been on the receiving end of a large portion of those. It's, sadly, an issue that's created a lot of strife in the community, sometimes irreparably hurting relationships. I'm really glad to see that's not the case between Aaron and I, though :-)

Naturally, I'm curious about your perspective and, thus, have created a short survey below (anyone can view the results, and it's not particularly scientific given potential audience biasing):

While I look forward to reading some great comments, please keep in mind the sensitivity of this topic and the guidelines for posting on SEOmoz. We do remove comments that don't add positively to the discussion or show respect to other posters, and it's when topics are at their most volatile that we'd like for everyone here to be at their most TAGFEE.


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Seth's Blog : The difference between a failure and a mistake

The difference between a failure and a mistake

A failure is a project that doesn't work, an initiative that teaches you something at the same time the outcome doesn't move you directly closer to your goal.

A mistake is either a failure repeated, doing something for the second time when you should have known better, or a misguided attempt (because of carelessness, selfishness or hubris) that hindsight reminds you is worth avoiding.

We need a lot more failures, I think. Failures that don't kill us make us bolder, and teach us one more way that won't work, while opening the door to things that might.

School confuses us, so do bosses and families. Go ahead, fail. Try to avoid mistakes, though.

 

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