Ethics and Legal Issues 
Legal Issues
Internet Advertising Digital Library
- Ethical Issues
- Legal Issues
The Internet is a cyber world without national borders. Its unique characteristics make it quite hard to control. There are many legal issues and cases taking place, and most governments want to become involved, to monitor and solve the problems. Online Advertising is one of the areas that always makes for lots of disputes.
Legal Issues of Internet Advertising
Using the Internet as an advertising medium is becoming more and more populars. Its unique advantages or characteristics make it difficult for other media such as television and magazine to compete with it.
On the Internet there are no national borders between users. It is possible for advertisers to target and transmit large amounts of information to large numbers of Internet users worldwide, and update or change the information easily, quickly, and inexpensively. It also provides interactive methods to attract users to be involved.
But those advantages also cause lots of legal issues and disputes which are new to everyone, including legislators. The territorial principle can not be applied to the whole Internet, legal requirements may differ depending upon the country in which a consumer accesses information, making it harder to control the infringement of intellectual property or trademark.
The most intense trademark disputes on the Internet are Domain name registration and use of Meta Tags for search engines, which are used to locate particular companies, topics or other bits of information. Many companies are complaining that some other web site is using their trademarks, product names or even the company's name as domains or as keywords in Meta Tags, which they feel is a trademark violation. Meta Tag Lawsuits from Search Engine Watch has some key cases and articles about this issue.
Other issues include the choice of law and jurisdiction, problems with advertising directed to children, fraud of credit repair schemes, pyramid scams and use of deep linking to bypass the advertisements on the home page of a linked site.
When you are thinking about advertising on the Internet, remember that many of the same rules that apply to other forms of advertising also apply to the electronic world. These rules and guidelines help to protect businesses and consumers, and help maintain the reliability of the Internet as an advertising medium.
On the other side, new laws and guidelines are continuing to be made to fit the fast development of the Internet. On May 3, 2000, the FTC (Federal Trade Commission) of the U.S.A announced new standards for making disclosures when advertising on the Internet. BBB (Better Business Bureau) also published specific guidelines to its members for children's advertising -- The Children's Advertising Review Unit (CARU) because children may have greater difficulty evaluating advertising claims and understanding the nature of the information advertisers provide.
In The Internet Advertising/Marketing Law Report VENABLE has a book online: So You Want to Be On The Internet. Its Chapter IV Advertising and Chapter V Online Privacy discuss these issues in detail. Information v. Commercialization: The Internet and Unsolicited Electronic Mail by Karin Mika Douglas is another related article.
J. Frederick's Bookmarks for the Cyberspace law Seminar includes lots of links to the sites related to online promotion/public relations and marketing, including Advertising, Unsolicited e-mail and Spamming, to help you understand all the legal issues involved.