Popular Firefox add-on, AdBlock Plus, is ticking off a lot of website owners by blocking ads on their websites. To many website owners, revenue generated from advertisement helps to pay for expensive hosting costs. In retaliation, some websites are calling to block Firefox users all together. Let’s look at the argument from both sides:

AdBlock is the greatest invention mankind has ever known!
Personally as a user who spent hours visiting different websites daily, I think AdBlock works extremely well in blocking all ads on every website I visit. It cuts down loading time tremendously. It’s even more useful in sites where the advertisements are extremely intrusive. Take a look at the following images of ESPN homepage with AdBlock on and off.

AdBlock On

AdBlock Off

As you can see, AdBlock successfully got rid of the ad banner at the top and the ad block on the right.

Fundamentally, I hate it when people tell me what I can do and cannot do on my own browser. I should be able to install whatever I want on my machine. Now, if I am consciously making the choice to install AdBlock, most likely I won’t be clicking on the advertisement anyway. So, the publisher didn’t really lose any potential ad revenue in me.

AdBlock is evil and should be banned from all browsers!
As a blog publisher myself, AdBlock is the last thing I want to see people using when they view my blog. Granted, I don’t make a whole lot from ads, but every little bit does help to cover my hosting cost. Now, my argument is that if you choose to visit my website, then you should be bound to my terms of agreement. One of my rules is that you do not change the content and appearance of my website in any form. AdBlock significantly changes the appearance of my website by removing ad banners and ad blocks. In the case of ESPN homepage, it makes the site looks uneven on the right side.

I put a lot of effort in maintaining the site and coming up with contents for readers to enjoy. If all of the sudden all of my readers install AdBlock, I would have no choice but to start charging people for coming to my website to recoup loss in advertising revenue. Doing that may cause most of my readers to walk away from visiting my website at all. But hey, someone’s got to pay for the service. If I am putting in my time and effort to deliver the content, at least the readers should pick up the tab. You may be fine in walking away from my small blog, but it’s becoming a trend that all major websites now carry advertisement. Besides ESPN, have you seen Facebook, Yahoo, CNN, … If they don’t get their advertising revenue, someone else will pay.

Conclusion!
As you can see, both sides present very sound arguments. There’s no doubt that AdBlock is a great product. But its impact on the online advertisement industry cannot be overlooked. Remember, online advertising is not evil. It helps to pay for some of the costs so that you and I can get access to contents or services for free. Running a website isn’t cheap. Taking away the ad revenue will just make it less enjoyable for website owners to continue to maintain the site. This may lead to a decline in quality of blogs and smaller websites. The bigger websites will simply make you and I pay for their costs one way or another. So, you may think that it’s your freedom to use AdBlock, but in reality you will pay for it sometime in the future.

What’s the best solution? Use AdBlock only when you must. Let’s say if you are researching random websites, go ahead and turn on AdBlock to avoid the annoying ads. But, when you are visiting a site that you enjoy often, go ahead and turn AdBlock off. You may not like the ads, but if you like the site, you can live with the ads. Think of it as a token of appreciation to the site owners for providing free content or service.

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In a surprising move, the FTC announced guidelines for bloggers to disclose payments from ad companies and celebrities will be held to account for promotions. This is huge win for average consumers who often research online for product reviews. There are many sites out there who appear to be offering genuine and unbiased product reviews when in fact they are receiving the products for free from the advertisers. In some cases, they may even be compensated for their reviews.

The FTC said that endorsements on blogs appear to be “word of mouth,” but that is not always the case — sometimes companies create their own blogs that can give the aura of objectivity.

While there is already an existing rule already states product reviewers must reveal any connection they have with advertisers, this rule now extends to bloggers. The existing rules carry a fine as high as $11,000 if product endorsers and reviewers don’t comply.

Funny thing is what would FTC define as a blogger or a blog? Is a Facebook or MySpace account considered a blog? What about Twitter page? So the next time a celebrity tweets about a product, he or she better disclose how the product was given to him or her for free. Good luck trying to fit that under 140 characters.

FTC’s effort could be the beginning of a larger attempt for the government to regulate the Internet. But enforcement could prove difficult. FTC won’t be hiring new personnel to monitor blogs. Instead, the FTC said it is more likely to go after advertisers rather than bloggers to ensure ad companies are giving product reviewers proper instructions about disclosure compliance.

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A family facing foreclosure is anything but a unique story in these troubled economic times. But for the Sampsons of Aberdeen, Maryland, the kindness of strangers — boosted by the Internet — made for a happy holiday.

With no job, no car and no income, and facing foreclosure unless they could come up with $10,000 in two weeks, the family turned to one of her oldest friends, Jaki Grier, for help. A self-described geek, Grier started blogging years ago. Since then, she’s contributed to a magazine’s Web site and regularly posts thoughts and life happenings on her LiveJournal page. So, she published the Sampsons’s story, along with a link where people could make a donation.

At the most, Jaki thought she could raise enough money to help the Sampsons pay a security deposit on an apartment after their home was auctioned.

But donations started pouring in. Within 24 hours, Grier’s blog had raised $1,000, far exceeding her expectations. People started linking to Grier’s blog from sites across the Internet and around the country.

Four days after Grier’s blog post, she had raised $3,400 — enough to repair the Sampsons’ car. That night, Grier went to bed ecstatic. The next morning she checked her PayPal account and was stunned to find the balance had ballooned to $10,900.

In the time it took Grier to take the donation link down from her blog, the balance had reached $11,032. In just five days, she had raised enough money to save her friend’s home. A Baltimore TV station, WBAL, caught wind of the story and put it on the air. Someone contacted Daniel Sampson and offered him a job interview.

It’s very touching that in a downturn economy, people continue to show compassion and generosity toward others in need. What’s more interesting is that blogging turned out to be the quickest and best channel for reaching out. Do not under-estimate the power of blogging. It as contributed greatly in bring the internet community together.

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One might say the Internet is anything you want it to be—a truth machine or spreader of lies—maybe it’s both. In light of recent events Apple would say it’s the latter. Twice over the past month, a blogger has sunk their stock.

It’s not so much the lie that matters, sometimes it’s who repeats it. That one blogger posted about Apple’s fictional $800 laptop was inconsequential. That the New York Times dropped it into their vast echo chamber was catastrophic. Investors thinking Apple, during turbulent economic times, had finally decided to tap a hugely untapped market—the low price laptop market—drove the price up, and upon discovery of the fiction stocks subsequently tanked.

Sounds like people lost some money there.

A couple of weeks later, an 18-year-old blogger said Apple CEO Steve Jobs had a attack. Out there somewhere in the blogosphere, this lie wouldn’t have mattered. Repeated on a CNN website and by Henry Blodget, and again you’ve got a plummeting stock. This time there were investigations into whether the blogger was trying to manipulate the market to make a little money. Authorities haven’t yet discovered that link, yet.

These two events come at an interesting time in the evolution of blogging. At blogging’s peak, it was seen as the purest exercise of free speech, as spackling on the crumbling walls of journalism—no corporate or legal overseers, no hidden political agendas, real raw, campy, honest, and prone to be wrong on occasion in the most harmless of ways, usually, except during election seasons maybe.

These days, the elite audience that has been discussing blogs since their inception (i.e., not politicians or journalists or “regular” folk) seem very split on the next frontier. Tim Berners-Lee, warning about the potential impact of misinformation on society, has called for a system for vetting websites and labeling them trustworthy or not so that “the thinking of cults” can be suppressed.

Wired’s Paul Boutin this week told the blogging were waters were not just tested, but getting crummy from all the toe-dipping by “cut-rate journalists” and “underground marketing campaigns.” Therefore, bloggers concerned with authenticity are wasting their time trying to get noticed, and should just stop.

Yes, you’re right, authenticity and need for attention don’t always go together.

But then there’s the more Pollyanna ilk that says, despite all the crap out there, what we’ve seen this election season is that the Internet may have effectively taken the wind out of dirty politics’ sails. Well, maybe it’s still worth something after all.

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Read Write Web conducted a survey with some quite interesting results. They asked 20 bloggers and social media consultants (that they claim to know and trust) what kind of money they make with their blogging gigs. The agreement was for RRW not to disclose their names, and for the bloggers themselves to be honest about their earnings.

“We hope that no one will be too angry with us if these numbers lead their employees to feel newly shortchanged and protest,” says RWW’s Kirkpatrick. “These folks are at the top of their field.”

The survey looked at different blogger set-ups, such as those who get paid by the post, those who are in-house full-time bloggers, and expert social media consultants. As Pro-Blogger Darren Rowse notes, the sample is small, but that doesn’t make the numbers any less intriguing.

The Numbers

It looks like the average rate on a per-post basis is $25, though some reported to make as little as $10 and as much as $80. “Let’s say these people are half-time pro-bloggers making $25 per post, writing 3 posts per day,” Kirkpatrick says. “That’s $75 per half-day, a little less than $20 per hour, about $1500 to $1750 per month for half time work. Take two of those jobs at once, do it for a year, and you’ll make about $40k.”

You could do worse, but in-house bloggers seem to be doing better. According to Kirkpatrick, respondents reported annual salaries ranging from $45k and $55k with benefits up to $70k, $80k and $90k with bonuses. “We’re tempted to say, based on the anonymously submitted but descriptive replies we got, that the closer to pure journalism our respondents were doing the lower their wages were,” he says. Now that’s interesting. Critics of blogs as news sources (like the one discussed in this article) ought to love that little nugget.

Those in-house bloggers still didn’t make as much as the participating social media consultants who make as little as $150 an hour, and most commonly about $300 an hour. That’s fascinating considering the amount of sponsored content infiltrating social networks. I have to wonder how the pay rates of these consultants reflect their practices in terms of white hat/black hat.

Again, this info shouldn’t be considered accurate for the entire industry, considering the number of participants (and also considering that they’re anonymous for that matter), but Read Write Web has certainly provided an interesting look into the possibilities of making money with blogs and social media. What are your thoughts? I’d love for any bloggers/consultants to post their earnings (anonymously of course) in the comments to see how they stack up against RRW’s data.

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A Russian blogger who referred to local police as “scum” in a post received a suspended jail sentence on Monday for extremism, leading other bloggers to express concern over online free speech.

Savva Terentiev, a 28-year-old musician from Syktyvkar, 940 miles north of Moscow, wrote a post that suggested the police should be dealt with by burning officers two times a day in a town square.

He was convicted for “inciting hatred or enmity,” and given a one-year suspended sentence. Free speech advocates fear the ruling could set a bad precedent for free speech online.

“This was an absolutely unjustified verdict,” Alexander Verkhovsky, director of the SOVA centre in Moscow, a non-governmental group that monitors extremism, told Reuters. “Savva for sure wrote a rude comment … but this verdict means it will be impossible to make rude comments about anybody.”

The blog post that led to his prosecution has been taken down. A Russian newspaper quoted him as writing in the post,”Those who become cops are scum,” and said police officers should be put on a bonfire.

During his prosecution Terentiev wrote an open letter to Russian President Dimitry Medvedev proclaiming his innocence.

“It is our duty to take responsibility for words on the Internet but … I did not call for the inflaming of social hatred towards the employees of the police department,” he wrote in the letter posted on his blog.

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The AP’s disharmony with bloggers may have only just begun, as the alternative it’s now offering to being served with takedown notices involves paying an up-front sum for excerpting online articles — as few as five words.

A meeting between the Associated Press’ Vice President for Strategic Planning Jim Kennedy and Robert Cox, who heads the Media Bloggers Association, is now planned for Thursday of this week. The subject at hand is the AP’s attempt to find a new way of sharing AP content, which now involves a fee per excerpt based on its word length.

On the heels of a blogosphere revolt last week because of its harsh actions against social news site The Drudge Retort, the AP regrouped over the weekend to take a less litigative — but more bureaucratic — approach to dealing with those who wish to quote its material.Where the group had previously invoked the Digital Millennium Copyright Act and sent cease-and-desist orders to at least one blogger, seeking the removal of excerpted content (in some cases as few as 17 words in length), now the press service has attached an “Excerpt for Web Use” charge for passages as short as five words in length.

The pricing scale for excerpting AP content begins at $12.50 for 5-25 words and goes as high as $100 for 251 words and up. Nonprofit organizations and educational institutions enjoy a discounted rate.

This scale is likely only a temporary solution, as it raises a truckload of questions. For instance: Suppose a news source holds a press conference, and makes a statement to several attendees including an AP correspondent. Does the citation of that quote count as an excerpt of an AP story? What if Reuters cited the same quote? Or worse, what if Reuters cited the quote differently, and a blogger noticed the difference and excerpted both for comparison? If the AP citation turned out to be in error, would the blogger still owe?

Also, should “boilerplate” words count towards the fee? For example, a phrase common among news stories is “[Name] had this to say:” for prefacing a published statement or quote. If the AP runs a story with this phrase, will it therefore cost anyone else $12.50 to use this 10 cent expression?

US COPYRIGHT ACT, Chapter 1, § 107. Limitations on exclusive rights: Fair useNotwithstanding the provisions of sections 106 and 106A, the fair use of a copyrighted work, including such use by reproduction in copies or phonorecords or by any other means specified by that section, for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching (including multiple copies for classroom use), scholarship, or research, is not an infringement of copyright. In determining whether the use made of a work in any particular case is a fair use the factors to be considered shall include –

(1) the purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of a commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes;

(2) the nature of the copyrighted work;

(3) the amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole; and

(4) the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work.

How about one more: It’s an unspoken fact that subscribers to the AP publish stories that use the AP’s facts and that give the AP credit, though which are rewritten by their own staff on-hand, sometimes for length. If a blogger cites a rewritten but credited AP piece, whom does he owe, the AP or the newspaper or online service that rewrote the AP?

The Associated Press’ Web Use excerpt system is powered by the ubiquitous iCopyright, whose own name ironically smacks of another popular trademark. Techachino has been checking the link to the iCopyright service today, and has noted it’s been down periodically.

In its “do’s and don’ts” list, iCopyright warns would-be copyright infringers by saying, “Don’t buy the ‘I am using it for the public good’ argument. That is a weak justification for infringement and sends the wrong message to students and employees.”

The fact that a work is unpublished shall not itself bar a finding of fair use if such finding is made upon consideration of all the above factors.

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Blog-focused advertising networks are all the rage right now, with both Federated Media and Glam pulling down big valuation financing rounds in the last few months based very early growth metrics. Other startups, like Six Apart, have launched their own blog advertising networks as well.

As we predicted, Technorati now joins them with the launch of Technorati Media later this morning (the site will be password protected until 9 am PST today), their own blog advertising network. This comes just a couple of days after news leaked of their new round of financing.

The company has been testing the new sales product with a number of partners, including BlogTalkRadio, BlogCritics, BlogCatalog, BlogTV, Technabob, GPSMagazine, GeekAlerts and NerdApproved. CEO Richard Jalichandra says these blogs reach a combined audience of approximately 17 million unique monthly visitors.

Early advertisers on the network include Honda, Acura, Toyota, t-mobile, Adobe, HP, Sandisk, MSFT, Verizon, Sun, Sony, Visa, Nike, Scion, Chevrolet, Paramount, Universal Pictures, 20th Century Fox and Best Buy.

Technorati has explored selling ads for third party sites for some time, but this is the first time they’ve opened the service up to anyone. Unlike Glam and Federated Media, they will take all comers, and say they expect blogs, from the large players on down through the long tail, will find they do a better job monetizing sites than the current options.

Ads are sold on a CPM basis. They will not make revenue guarantees, says Jalichandra, but the split between parties is negotiable. He declined to state what rates have been negotiated with beta partners. This is similar to what Six Apart promises, which is also targeting the long tail of blogs.

Jalichandra also says Technorati is uniquely positioned to sell ads at premium rates, even through small blogs, because they will be able to use descriptive tags/keywords, along with their existing blog indexing technology, to better match ads with content.

Technorati’s has seven sales professionals, led by VP Sales Tony Pribyl, a new hire. They also hired a new marketing lead, Jennifer McLean, away from Glam recently.

For now Technorati is only working with larger blogs, although it will be open to all comers in 2-3 months.

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An increasing number of bloggers are being arrested for criticizing governments and exposing human rights abuse, according to a report from the University of Washington.

Since 2003, 64 citizens have been arrested for expressing their views on a blog. In 2007 three times as many people were arrested for blogging about political issues than in 2006. Over half of the arrests in the last five years were made in China, Egypt and Iran.

The report said the increasing number of arrests was evidence of the “growing” political importance of blogging. It found that arrests typically increase in times of “political uncertainty,” like elections or large protests.

Many bloggers faced jail time after being arrested. The average prison sentence for blogging was 15 months. The longest sentence was eight years.

The actual number of bloggers who are arrested is probably higher, since many arrests in China, Zimbabwe, and Iran are not reported. For example the Committee to Protect Bloggers has released details about 344 people arrested in Burma, some who are thought to be bloggers.

The report said that many countries, possibly as many as 30, have implemented technological restrictions on what people can do online. In countries such as China this has made it challenging for people to use a blog as a way to protest.

The report estimated that the number of bloggers arrested in 2008 would surpass the 36 seen in 2007 due to the popularity of blogging, more enforcement of online restrictions, and elections in China, Pakistan, Iran and the U.S.

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Companies that create fake blogs in order to hawk products violate what most people would consider basic truthfulness. Starting May 28th, they may also be violating UK law.

An 88-page document gets into the specifics, but it appears anyone or anything misrepresenting itself to consumers could get in trouble thanks to new regulations. The potential penalties are serious: “a fine or imprisonment not exceeding two years or both.”

That’s the sort of stuff that’ll make a lot of marketers play it safe. Judith Lewis, who seems to have been the first person to notice the fresh policy, wrote, “Be aware black hats in the UK - if you get caught the stakes just got criminally high.”

Still, what remains to be seen is how frequently the regulations will be enforced. Big UK-based corporations are probably at risk of prosecution, yet there’s simply too much going on for every fake blog to be stopped. All sorts of businesses may continue acting as their own best customers.

We’ll see how this goes. For the record, there doesn’t seem to be any equivalent legislation, either on the books or in the works, that would apply in America.

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