Last Sunday the IPKat carried a note by his good friend Uli Hildebrandt
of a recent German appellate decision on liability for links and
adwords. This piece, "Liability for links and adwords, German style --
and a visit to Google Translate", has attracted a lively comment from
another of the IPKat's good friends, none other than fellow blogger
Maximilian Schubert (Austotrabant). Writes Maximilian: "Of Cats and
Dogs -- or the Difference Between Keyword Advertising and Meta Tags
Actually, I do think making a proper distinction between Keyword
Advertising and Meta Tags is important in law; below, you will find a
list of three reasons as to why:
1: Because they aim for different effectsWith the help of metatags,
people attempt to transport content or to improve the ranking of a site
in the SEARCH RESULTS, while Keyword Advertising is used to display
ADVERTISEMENTS above (Top-Ad) or beside (Side-Ad) the search result.
While users soon "learn" to ignore these ads (for more details on this
effect see Level of Trust in Search Engines), trying to smuggle oneself
into the search results is a way of exploiting users' incredible, and
most probably unfounded, trust in the ranking of search engines (please
see here, under Do Users notice the Ads?). So, while the first is a
method of advertising, the later one aims at deceit. But does this make
any difference in practice? It does! Why?
2: "Because mummy said so"Let's face it, this has always been the
longest-running and best-ever argument in the world. The market leader
has officially declared (again) that it does not consider metatags for
the ranking of its search results. Maybe others do, but Google at any
rate hasn't since 2004(!). So, as there already is a difference in
practice, the question is, shouldn't this difference be reflected in
the law as well ...?
3: Because evolution/development just keeps moving onAlthough cats and
dogs are both mammals, only a few would argue that they are the same.
While it is completely reasonable, and in some cases even necessary, to
develop analogies between existing practices and new ones, this does
not mean that the old terminology should be forced on to new phenomena.
The analogy might later (in fact) turn out to be perfectly applicable,
but using the old term might prove problematic and should be regarded
as unprofessional.
(And dear colleagues let's face it, not everybody who has been given a
BlackBerry by his/her company or has bought him/herself a new
shiny/stylish iPhone is an IT-lawyer. This stuff IS sometimes a bit
complicated - otherwise my doctoral thesis would prove to be rather
pointless!)
Please feel most welcome to disagree any or all of the above and feed
this troll by commenting".
--
Posted By Jeremy to The IPKat - IP pleasure, without the pain! on
11/05/2009 03:50:00 PM
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