Archive for August, 2008
How Not to Obtain Online Consent, or Why Panera Bread Owes Me Free Muffins
posted by Paul Ohm
When I need to edit an article, I will sometimes park myself at a booth at the local Panera Bread, sipping the decent coffee, snacking on the beautiful (notice I didn’t say tasty) pastries, and using the free WiFi. Long ago, I noticed that Panera had made a stupid technological mistake that probably strips it of the right to manage its network lawfully.
Panera tries to extract consent from its users using what is known as a captive portal, the same method used by most hotel and airport WiFi network providers. When a Panera WiFi user first tries to connect to any website, Panera’s computers redirect her instead to its own web page with a link to its terms of service (ToS). Only when the user clicks “I agree” may she start surfing.
Compared to some of the other methods Internet providers use for attempting to obtain consent, a captive portal deserves some praise. It is much more likely to be noticed and read than a ToS or privacy policy link buried on a home page (or, as the case may be, not even on the home page). It is better than the paper privacy policies my credit card companies send with their monthly bills, usually along with a half-dozen ads. Unlike either of these methods, a captive portal acts like a virtual stop sign–until you click “I agree,” you can go no further. (Of course, calling even a captive portal meaningful consent seems to stretch things if the ToS offered are dozens of pages long.)
But if Panera ever tried to enforce its WiFi ToS–say it got caught monitoring user communications and had to defend against a wiretapping lawsuit or say it was sued for banning a user suspected of downloading porn in violation of the ToS–a court should probably hold that its ToS are unenforceable. Panera has made a simple web design mistake that introduces doubt about what terms are being agreed to by its users.
August 27, 2008 at 11:39 am
Posted in: Cyberlaw, Privacy, Privacy (Consumer Privacy)
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The Evolution of the Political Spot
posted by Nate Oman
A while back, I blogged about the art of the political ad and several people pointed out the fact that ads had shortened greatly from 1964 to 1984. With the advent of YouTube, it seems that at least some political spots are getting longer, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that we’re getting more substance. What, for example, is it exactly that this is trying to say about Obama? I’ve watched it a couple of times now, and I am still at a loss as to what it tells me about his candidacy, other than the dubious information conveyed by an implicit endorsement from Cindy Lauper and George Costanza, et al. We get visual references to gas prices, war, and immigration, but not much more. Of course, “Daisy” was hardly a policy seminar, but the message was clear enough: A vote for Goldwater will lead to nuclear holocaust.
August 27, 2008 at 11:05 am
Posted in: Politics
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The New Gilded Age
posted by Frank Pasquale
Larry Bartels’s new book Unequal Democracy: The Political Economy of the New Gilded Age helps explode some persistent myths about income inequality. We are frequently told that inequality–even the extreme growth in inequality witnessed over the past 30 years–is an inevitable concomitant of globalization, or is necessary for economic growth, or can’t be remedied by politics. Bartels’s work complements the growing consensus–led by people like David Cay Johnston, Jacob Hacker, Stephen Gosselin, Barbara Ehrenreich, and Robert Frank, among many others–that all these complacent contentions are not merely unsupported, but actually reverse the true causes and effects at work. Political change has accelerated US inequality–and only political change can address it.
This quote doesn’t do Bartels’s book justice, but it discloses one foundation of his argument:
[T]he real incomes of middle-class families have grown twice as fast under Democrats as they have under Republicans, while the real incomes of working poor families have grown six times as fast under Democrats as they have under Republicans. These substantial partisan differences persist even after allowing for differences in economic circumstances and historical trends beyond the control of individual presidents. . . .
[E]scalating in equality is not simply an inevitable economic trend—. . .a great deal of economic in equality in the contemporary United States is specifically attributable to the policies and priorities of Republican presidents. . . . .Voters’ seemingly straightforward tendency to reward or punish the incumbent government at the polls for good or bad economic performance turns out to be warped in ways that are both fascinating and politically crucial.
Insights like this should not be news–one need only to look at how lopsidedly the tax cuts of 2001 and 2003 helped the very wealthy in order to see real partisan differences in attitudes about inequality. But it turns out that the same political ignorance that libertarians like Ilya Somin and Bryan Caplan have been complaining about turns out to be quite helpful to their fiscal strategy:
August 27, 2008 at 10:59 am
Posted in: Economic Analysis of Law, Law and Inequality
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A Talk About Heller at ‘Bama
posted by Mike O'Shea
This Thursday I’ll be in recently rain-swept Tuscaloosa, giving a talk at the University of Alabama School of Law on “The Future of the Right to Arms After D.C. v. Heller.” at the kind invitation of ‘Bama’s chapter of the Federalist Society. I hope to discuss Heller‘s revision of U.S. v. Miller, the role of nineteenth-century state court decisions in Heller, and future Second Amendment battlegrounds such as incorporation, concealed carry, and the possible renewal of the expired federal “assault weapons” ban. Time permitting, I’ll also discuss what Heller illustrates about the distinctive character of American conservatism.
The talk will be held at 12:00 p.m. Thursday, August 28, in the Moot Courtroom in the UA Law School building. It would be a treat to encounter some CoOp readers there.
Travel bleg:
I’ve never been to Alabama. Any suggestions for things to do/see during a brief visit to Tuscaloosa or Birmingham (where I’m staying)? I do plan to visit the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute.
August 26, 2008 at 7:56 pm
Posted in: Current Events, Second Amendment, Supreme Court
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Untanned, Rested, and Ready
posted by Mike O'Shea
Hello, all. It’s a pleasure to be back after what turned out to be an extended post-Heller hiatus. I spent the summer writing articles on the Second Amendment after Heller. (I’ll post drafts soon.) I also spent a couple of weeks just lolling around dazed, hiding from the amazing wave of relentless 103+ F heat we had in Oklahoma; drinking cider, listening to pre-Hagar VH and trying to metabolize as coolly as possible.
I feel out of sorts without SCOTUS to blog on — to kick around anymore, as it were. While we await the first Monday in October, I reserve the right to talk about stuff that happened last Term, such as Justice Souter’s big punitive damages opinion in Exxon v. Baker, which is a fascinating rhetorical performance — an example of how to write an aggressive, innovative opinion at an even, low emotional temperature that almost makes it seem mundane. Useful trick, that.
August 26, 2008 at 6:34 pm
Posted in: Blogging
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Enduring Credit Crunch
posted by Lawrence Cunningham
The FDIC just released its periodic list of financially troubled banks. There are 117 listed banks, up from 90 last quarter, commanding $78 billion in assets, up from $26 billion. FDIC leaders say the report is unsurprising, noting that the credit crunch that began more than a year ago does not appear to be abating.
At least two profound problems contribute to the enduring credit crunch, of length and severity not seen since the Great Depression. The first is that the securities driving the crunch, including pools of sub-prime mortgage loans with complex features, are difficult to value. Investors continue to shun them. The second is that the US government’s efforts at building confidence despite those valuation difficulties have failed. Investors are not impressed with the government’s actions or plans to date. No solution to either problem appears on the horizon.
August 26, 2008 at 5:46 pm
Posted in: Current Events
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Fallacies About Privacy
posted by Daniel Solove
In today’s Wall Street Journal, Gordon Crovitz has an op-ed arguing that we’ve gotten over privacy:
We seem to be following the advice of Scott McNealy, chairman of Sun Microsystems, who in 1999 said, “You have zero privacy anyway. Get over it.” And the observation by Oracle CEO Larry Ellison: “The privacy you’re concerned about is largely an illusion. All you have to give up is your illusions, not any of your privacy.”
These comments could be dismissed as technology executives trying to minimize complaints about technology. But whatever we say about how much we value privacy, a close look at our actual behavior suggests we have gotten over it. A recent study by AOL of privacy in Britain found that 84% of people said they would not disclose details about their income online, but in fact 89% of them willingly did.
Crovitz makes a common argument — that the fact that people express concern over their privacy but do little to protect it demonstrates that they could really care less about privacy. In my book, Understanding Privacy, I argue that this reasoning is flawed. People might be generally concerned about their privacy but not realize the specific ways that their personal information will be used when they give it out. People give out bits of data here and there, and each individual disclosure to one particular entity might be relatively innocuous. But when the data is combined, it starts to become a lot more telling about a person’s tastes and habits.
Crovitz goes on to argue:
August 25, 2008 at 2:45 pm
Posted in: Administrative Announcements
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The Cultural Contradictions of Jenny Craig
posted by Frank Pasquale
I was astonished to learn that the number of TV shows about weight loss has ballooned to seven this season. Alessandra Stanley’s superb report on them catalogs the cultural contradictions they’re a part of:
Americans are goaded into ever more drastic and extreme expectations of physical perfection on prime time, while their path is mined with Double Croissan’wich specials at Burger King and Olive Garden “Tour of Italy” triptychs (lasagna, chicken parmigiana and fettuccine Alfredo). On “Today” a homily on sensible dieting from the Joy Fit Club is followed by instructions in a following segment for hibiscus margaritas and churros — deep-fried, sugar-dipped Mexican crullers.
On the WE network’s show “The Secret Lives of Women,” a tribute to three women’s hard-won journey to extreme weight loss is interrupted by an ad for Baskin-Robbins Oreo sundae. It’s a world of contradictions bracketed by all-you-can-eat breakfast at Applebee’s and pay-as-you-go gastric bypass.
Anyone who’s read Benforado/Hanson/Yosifon’s work on the situational pressures toward obesity probably won’t be surprised by these juxatpositions. Nevertheless, they’re a strikingly intimate example of what Daniel Bell might have termed the “cultural contradictions of capitalism.” The donut factory may forbid its workers from smoking in order to lower its health care costs, but its profit margins depend on big sales to the 65% or so of the population that is overweight or obese.
The market has given us these shows primarily because they offer a chance to feel like we’re doing something about the problem without actually doing much. As Stanley notes, “Mostly the visuals feed complacency; as overweight as a viewer may feel, he or she surely will never fall this far into the potato chip abyss. And if the morbidly obese people on screen can drop 100 pounds, then even the chubbiest kid on the couch can fit into a swimsuit by summer.”
August 24, 2008 at 11:11 pm
Posted in: Economic Analysis of Law, Feminism and Gender, Privacy
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Terrific Series on Health Care
posted by Frank Pasquale
The debate over health care is shaping up into a showdown between further marketization of an American system already an outlier in its degree of commerciality, or comparative analysis of how other countries manage to spend less and cover more. NPR’s latest series comparing the French, Dutch, Swiss, British, and German health care systems to the US is a terrific contribution. Here’s the bottom line:
47 million people in the United States lack health coverage. It’s one reason the U.S. ranks 29th in the world in terms of life expectancy and at or near the bottom of most international health care comparisons. [But] many of the universal health care systems in Europe provide high-quality health care to all residents, at a much lower cost than what people in the United States spend on health care. Waiting times for care aren’t all that different from the United States . . . . [and] the countries of Western Europe rank higher on most measures of good health.
If the mainstream media had any sense of professional responsibility, this issue would be at the center of the current campaign. Until it is, Glenn Greenwald’s sad indictment will ring true: “our elections are determined by . . . petty, personality-based distractions.”
August 24, 2008 at 2:48 pm
Posted in: Health Law
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The Retreat of the Real
posted by Frank Pasquale
The rise of digitized images has led many journalists to worry about credentializing any photo that comes their way. That skepticism is starting to spread:
Bloggers, who had already appointed themselves watchdogs over reporters, editors and producers, were now taking on photographers. While the goal of increased transparency in the media is laudable, it may foster greater cynicism about journalistic ethics. “Photographers were always able to manipulate pictures in the darkroom,” says Keith Morrison, a former Calgary Herald photographer who is now publisher of C-ing Magazine, a publication about photojournalism. “But now, as the public gains awareness of digital photography and Photoshop, they have stopped trusting the pictures in newspapers and magazines.”
It’s part of a larger cultural malaise about “what’s real:”
August 24, 2008 at 8:16 am
Posted in: Bioethics
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Are You Disposed Toward Corruption?
posted by Dave Hoffman
A reader passes along an interesting white collar crime story. In the latest development of an (apparently) long-running federal investigation,
Scott Salyer, president and chief executive officer of SK Foods, Monterey, Calif., a food processor and the parent company of Salyer American Fresh Foods Inc., is accused of allegedly encouraging New Jersey-based broker Randall Rahal to offer bribes to its customers’ buyers over a four-year period.Federal Bureau of Investigation special agent Paul Artley filed an affidavit Aug. 14 in U.S. District Court in Sacramento, Calif., supporting the government’s April 16 seizure of nearly $600,000 held in the name of Rahal’s company, Intramark USA Inc., from two of his accounts in the Vineland, N.J. branch of Sun National Bank. The document alleges he used the accounts to bribe buyers from a number of food companies.
I tracked down that affidavit. A highlight, from my perspective, comes in paragraph 23:
“Witness #1 stated RAHAL told Witness #1 and others that he identifies the customers that he can get to take bribes by dropping a $100 bill and picking it up and saying, ‘You must have dropped this, is it yours?; If the individual says ‘yes,’ RAHAL knows that they are open to a ‘business offer.’ Witness #1 understood ‘business offer’ to mean bribe.”
There are other juicy bits, as this storynotes, including this one:
In one phone conversation between Salyer and Rahal, the broker tells the SK chief a buyer is “gonna need a retirement program. So, it’s a perfect fit for me.”Salyer asks, “How fast are you going to reel in that fish?”
Rahal, referring to a dinner meeting he has set up with the buyer, says, “Probably by the time the coffee comes.”
An enthusiastic Salyer replies, “I want that sucker on speed reel.”
Apart from the local color, the story is interesting because it goes to the heart of the situationalist v. dispositionalist explanation of criminality so often discussed over at The Situationalist. Were the folks who accepted Rahal’s bribes disposed toward corruption, or did his temptation make them act in ways they never otherwise would have? It’s a question that bears on our attributional assumptions and the ways we punish. For what it’s worth, I suspect that Rahal’s test is one that many, many of us would fail.
(Image Source: Wikicommons)
August 23, 2008 at 6:11 pm
Posted in: Behavioral Law and Economics, Consumer Protection Law, Corporate Law, Criminal Law, Securities
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DC’s New Taxi Pricing
posted by Lawrence Cunningham
Regular visitors to Washington, DC this fall will notice a new taxi meter pricing system. It replaces the zone pricing system that had been in effect for generations. Under the old system, fares were based on how many zones a trip traversed (there were 8 main zones and 23 sub-zones); under the new one, fares are based on a combination of distance travelled and time consumed. The change, approved by the Mayor after Congress required him to act, took effect earlier this summer.
Cynics note that the old system benefited Congress. Capitol Hill and Georgetown, where many Members have homes, were within a single zone despite being miles apart; many governmental buildings where Members attend meetings are within a single zone. Citizens and visitors are said to benefit from the new approach. A Washington Post poll reveals that the overwhelming majority of DC residents (some 80%) favored it. Taxi owners and operators resisted, staging work slowdowns and stoppages and unsuccessfully challenging the change in court.
It is possible that neither the old nor new system is optimal, as both are products of regulatory imposition. The alternative to regulatory imposition is private market pricing. Individual taxi operators elect how to price, whether using zones, time and/or distance, flat or negotiated rates, peak and off-peak pricing and so on. The most common approach to taxi pricing in large US cities, however, is by regulatory imposition using the time-and-distance meter pricing, now adopted in Washington. It does not appear that Congress or the District government seriously considered a private market pricing alternative.
August 22, 2008 at 3:24 pm
Posted in: Current Events
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Student Control
posted by Thomas Crocker
In a world of increased occasions for forms of social control, the university is extending its reach. In an AP story today we learn that universities are broadening the scope of their campus behavior codes to apply to student conduct off campus, in an effort to cultivate humanity, to borrow from Martha Nussbaum. One purpose is to make students better citizens within the community. From the article:
We have a responsibility to educate our students about being responsible citizens,” said Elizabeth A. Higgins, Washington’s director of community standards and student conduct, whose office has ‘educated’ 19 students since the extended code of conduct took effect in January.
The scope of these codes can be quite broad, as the article reports that the University of Colorado code “regulates any conduct that ”affects the health, safety or security of any member of the university community or the mission of the university.” The article further reports that Seattle University “has put its students on notice that cyber-patrolling will continue this year.”
Universities have a unique institutional role with regard to their students, and the impact of student conduct on surrounding communities can be significant (with both positive and negative externalities). Extending the scope of behavior monitoring to off-campus sites and to the internet does, however, reduce the realm of personal privacy and provides another occasion in which institutional control over behavior applies beyond the institution’s own parameters. Even if the purpose of this sort of cultivated humanity is to produce good citizens, it is unclear to me that more extensive monitoring is the way to achieve that goal. Without spaces to develop a sense of serendipitous self-determination, cultivating humanity may be more like growing corn – we get more homogenization and a good food supply, but we may also get more corn than we bargained for. Besides providing another occasion when one can mention Foucault’s work on forms of social control, it may be that universities are merely catching up with other institutions such as private companies who expect certain kinds of behavior from off-duty employees. Is it likely that law schools will increase the monitoring of their students off-campus or on-line any time soon as well?
August 22, 2008 at 2:24 pm
Posted in: Education, Privacy
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Illinois Law Review, Issue 2008:4 (August 2008)
posted by University of Illinois Law Review
Illinois Law Review, Issue 2008:4 (August 2008)
(Please see our website for past issues.)
Articles
Decoding and Recoding Natural Monopoly, Deregulation, and Intellectual Property
Shubha Ghosh
Stephen M. Griffin
Bootleggers, Baptists & Televangelists: Regulating Tobacco by Litigation
Bruce Yandle, Joseph A. Rotondi, Andrew P. Morriss and Andrew Dorchak
Walking and Talking Like a Kerp: Implications of BAPCPA Section 503(C) for Effective Leadership at Troubled Companies
Emily Watson Harring
The Future of the Corroboration Requirement in Patent Law: Why a Clear, Strict Standard Benefits All
Mike R. Turner
August 22, 2008 at 10:57 am
Posted in: Law Rev (Illinois), Law Rev Contents
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Market Dreams, Payola Nightmares
posted by Frank Pasquale
What’s commodified and what’s not? Long a concern of legal theorists, it’s now entering the mainstream. The FCC is investigating product placement. Google, the veritable shadow government of the web, appears to be punishing websites like Findlaw for commodifying their links. Book blurbs are now bought and sold on the open market:
A new company recently emerged on the publishing scene, offering writers the chance to buy and sell book endorsements. Aimed at self-published authors, Blurbings LLC traffics in “blurbs,” the often hyperbolic declamations on book covers alerting readers that they’re holding the greatest single work of literature since the Bible — or perhaps since “The Da Vinci Code.”
And Michael Arrington, kingpin of Silicon Valley venture capital blogging, accuses a rival of accepting cash payments that are tantamount to bribes:
August 22, 2008 at 12:09 am
Posted in: Cyberlaw, Economic Analysis of Law, Google & Search Engines
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Cultural Difference
posted by Deven Desai
This is a display in a duty free shop in Guadalajara.
My guess is that the disclaimers are required by law and the multi-pack box cannot be otherwise offered. Still the size of the display and the choice of putting the boxes next to the sign with the sale information rather than just a sign is interesting. Maybe they had to do so or maybe folks are inured to the warnings. Either way it startled me and made me think this display is free market meets information.
August 21, 2008 at 8:03 pm
Posted in: Advertising
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Guardian on Google
posted by Frank Pasquale
There’s an interesting article in the Guardian on Google as “friendly giant or greedy Goliath.” I’ll give a law-related snippet, and one comment:
[T]he human rights watchdog Privacy International ranked the company bottom in a major survey of how securely the leading internet companies handle their users’ personal information. Liberty, the civil liberties organisation, and the National Consumer Council have also expressed concern.
[T]he European Parliament is already scrutinising Google, and some believe it is only a matter of time before Ofcom, the media regulator in Britain, is forced to intervene. Orlowski of The Register says: ‘It’s the big regulatory issue of the next 10 years: how politicians deal with Google. If the web is as important as the politicians say, it seems odd that one company sets the price and defines the terms of business.’
August 21, 2008 at 3:59 pm
Posted in: Google & Search Engines
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Advice to First Years: Pick it Out of the Hat
posted by Dave Hoffman
Everyone is giving advice to first-year students these days. Good stuff! I was asked to contribute some thoughts to the first-year class during their orientation, speaking for Temple’s faculty. My (short) speech, enhanced with some inspirational hyperlinks, follows.
* * *
I’m honored to have the opportunity to address you on behalf of the law school’s faculty. As you might imagine, because this is an important day, the invitation came accompanied with certain stage directions.
I was told, above all, to be brief, to try to be funny, and to express the faculty’s sense of its relationship to you.
This stage direction was necessary in part because law professors are so unused to giving lectures, or inspiring anyone with gentle humor.
Rather, our normal approach, when faced (as I am now) with a roomful of students, is to pick some likely candidate – usually someone who is looking down – and ask them what we’re supposed to be learning.
If that poor student doesn’t know the answer, I usually call on someone else, on the theory that the best way to learn judgment is to watch error. This of course is the vaunted Socratic method. I’ll confess: from my side of the room, it’s terribly fun.
I was pretty tempted to use that approach today, calling on one of you, hoping that you would be brief, funny, and wise. But this seemed cruel, and would unnecessarily put my tenure at risk. So I turned, as I often do, to one of our great works of literature for inspiration.
I assume that many of you have read the Harry Potter series … For those that haven’t, imagine that at the beginning of the school year at the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, a small, shabby, sentient hat sorts students into various dorms which will be their homes at school. As the hat explains, Gryffindors are brave; Hufflepuffs are just; Ravenclaws are smart; and Slytherins are cunning. The way it works is that you put the Hat on your head and it tells you what’s in your heart.
It struck me that it might be very, very cool if I had a magical hat, which could right now sort you into the lawyers you will be. Now our lawyer sorting device might not be a wizard’s hat, but instead, a small, dented, formal bowler, kind of like this one. [At this point, I brandished a bowler, sort of like the ones in the picture to the right.]
August 21, 2008 at 1:21 pm
Posted in: Law School
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Which is More Confusing: ECPA or the Tax Code?
posted by Paul Ohm
Hearing Sarah Lawsky crack wise so often and so hilariously about the Internal Revenue Code during her visit made me think of a little joke I have used many times when lecturing about the Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA). After warning listeners that ECPA is complex and confusing, I will often say something like, “And I challenge any tax experts in the room to go head-to-head with me in a battle for the title of ‘most confusing part of the U.S. Code.’” The comment usually inspires a few polite titters–from the kind of people who find jokes about comparative statutory complexity funny–so I keep using it.
The problem is, I have no idea whether I have a leg to stand on. Can ECPA really hold a candle to the infamous complexity of the IRC? Is there another part of the U.S. Code that makes both of these seem lucid in comparison?
This connects to James Grimmelmann’s recent series of posts about a new lawyer being a menace to his or her clients. He has been developing the point that mere book larnin’ isn’t enough to prepare a lawyer to represent a client competently, at least not in certain substantive areas, and he offers wills & trusts, bankruptcy, and copyright as examples. What makes a substantive area of law more complicated than another?
Keeping it focused on legislation, what factors conspire to make a statute complex and confusing (and, as an aside, can a statute be complex but not confusing or confusing but not complex?) Within my areas of expertise, here are a few factors that make ECPA complex:
- ECPA defines many terms, and it defines many terms in ways that are disconnected from ordinary meaning. (I’m looking at you, “electronic storage”!)
- ECPA (and more generally speaking, the Wiretap Act which predates ECPA) has many parallel definitions that Congress may not have intended to treat alike (yes, I’m talking about you two, “wire communication” and “electronic communication.”).
- ECPA interacts in mysterious ways with other laws (try to figure out what “readily accessible to the general public” means!)
- ECPA is rarely litigated. Orin Kerr explains how this has made a mess of the law in Lifting the ‘Fog’ of Internet Surveillance: How a Suppression Remedy Would Change Computer Crime Law, 54 Hastings Law Journal 805 (2003).
- ECPA regulates technology, so its meaning often shifts as technology changes. This problem is exacerbated because the basic structure and essential definitions are unchanged from 1986, so a law written to regulate mainframes is today applied to Web 2.0 and cloud computing.
So to all of the tax experts out there, what makes the tax code so complicated? Do all of the factors listed above apply to the IRC as well? The IRC is much longer than ECPA, and it is supplemented with reams of CFRs and other regs, but that can’t be enough alone to earn it the title, can it?
And what say you bankruptcy and copyright experts?
And even more generally, what are the objective metrics we can use to calculate comparative statutory complexity. (Yes, I’m picturing a NCAA-style tourney bracket right now.)
August 21, 2008 at 12:42 pm
Posted in: Uncategorized
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Opiate of the Cubicle Classes?
posted by Frank Pasquale
I’m often a critic on this blog, but I want to mention one heartwarming story today: the rise of the website Cute Overload to cult status on the internet. They’ve made feel-good blogging a big business: “a ‘premium’ ad on Cute Overload costs about $2,000 a week, with an estimated 808,000 page views.” But some have a less than charitable view of its success:
It is all about niches and demographics, said Henry Copeland, founder of Blogads. The audience is overwhelmingly female and between 18 and 34. “For these women,” he said, “recently graduated from college and sitting in grim corporate America, Cute puts them in touch with their nonwork selves. It’s escapism.”
Though I’m no stranger to critical theory here, I think this goes a step too far. Sometimes a fun website is just a fun website.
Picture Credit: Baby Hedgehog in a Cast, from Cute Overload’s “Cute or Sad” category.
August 21, 2008 at 11:01 am
Posted in: Intellectual Property
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