By: Brian J. Meli
As the smoke settles from the Federal Communications Commission’s recent decision to reclassify broadband service as a utility, and the tempest that is the net neutrality debate fades from the 24-hour news cycle, one could be forgiven for thinking it’s back to business as usual for broadband Internet service providers (ISPs). It’s also tempting to assume—what with net neutrality charting new highs in search volume, and Google News returning more than two million hits for the term—that everything worth writing about the subject has been written, several times over. But as we await the first lawsuits challenging the FCC’s authority to turn the broadband offerings of Comcast, Time Warner, AT&T & Co. into utility services, and the reinvigorated debate that comes with them, it’s important to understand that there’s more to this story than just making the Internet a more equal place. If you’re in the marketing or advertising business, a lot more. Because the FCC’s new Open Internet Order may soon bring changes to the way you do your job. Here’s how:
and shutting down the illicit websites that notoriously traffic in all of the above. But there’s a new front in the war on intellectual property, one where the threat posed by counterfeited and pirated goods has quietly become just as insidious. Far from the big-box shelves, the online auctions and the Internet landing pages that have long been the front lines of this conflict; hidden in plain sight only a few taps away, lies a large and expanding commercial ecosystem rife with infringement activity—a place that, until recently, has operated largely outside the focus of brand enforcement officials. This relatively new and dangerous frontier is the mobile app marketplace.
hearts and minds, part fair warning before punitive actions start raining down, the September initiative consisted of a salvo of choicely worded warning letters addressed to more than 60 U.S. companies, including 20 of the largest 100 national advertisers. The message contained in those letters was clear: advertising has changed dramatically, but advertiser’s disclosure obligations have not.
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