The BadAds Weblog: April 2002

Clueless Judge Jumbles His Fax

Fax spammer Fax.com doesn't care that their intrusive faxed ads cost you money by using your ink, paper, and phone line. They also don't care that their ads force their way into your home or business. All they care about is being able to sell to you in any way t hey can.

A United States District Court judge apparently agrees with Fax.com. The following is an excerpt from a self-congratulatory press release sent out by the fax spammer:

A United States District Court in Missouri has ruled that the federal statute that bars faxing of unsolicited advertisements is unconstitutional. The ruling arose from a case filed by the State of Missouri against two fax advertising companies, Fax.com, a company headquartered in Aliso Viejo, Calif., and American Blast Fax, a now defunct Texas company. In a decision filed on March 13, the Court rejected the State's contention that unsolicited fax advertisements pose a "serious problem" and found that the broad ban on such advertisements unnecessarily violates First Amendment rights.

Missouri State Attorney General Jeremiah (Jay) Nixon filed the suits against Fax.com and American Blast Fax in August of 2000, asserting that unsolicited fax advertising violates the federal Telephone Consumer Protection Act of 1991 (TCPA). When the federal statute's ban on fax advertising was attacked as unconstitutional, the Federal Communications Commission joined the suit at the invitation of the Court to defend the ban. After careful consideration of evidence and arguments submitted by the FCC, the State of Missouri and Fax.com, Senior U.S. District Judge Stephen Limbaugh ruled that the TCPA's ban on unsolicited fax advertising violates the First Amendment. The Court rejected the argument that unsolicited fax advertisements – typically one page – cause recipients to incur substantial printing costs and that fax ads actually prevent businesses and consumers from receiving other faxes. The Court also found that "there is no rationality behind the government's distinction between unsolicited advertisements and other unsolicited faxes," and therefore the ban on fax advertisements does not "directly advance" its goal of saving costs and freeing fax machines.

What you can do: Write, fax, or call Senior U.S. District Judge Stephen Limbaugh and tell him why you think he made the wrong decision. After all, why should consumers have to pay for the privilege of being forced to look at ads? Also, the First Amendment protects your right to speech, but it doesn't guarantee a forum or an audience for that speech – especially if that forum forces its costs on the audience.

Senior U.S. District Judge Stephen Limbaugh
Thomas F. Eagleton U.S. Courthouse, 3rd Floor
111 South 10th Street
St. Louis, MO 63102
Phone:314-244-7400
Fax:314-244-7409

It probably won't do much good, but you can always contact Fax.com (info@fax.com, phone: 800-310-5188, fax: 949-916-8629) and tell them what you think of their intrusive advertising practices:

April 23, 2002

Heel! Fetch! Sell!

Poor dogs – they're touted as man's best friend, and we use them as walking advertising billboards. The following is from an article in Media Life magazine:

The latest in spectacular, out-of-the-box and over-the-edge billboards are alive. K9 Billboards – groups of trained dogs sporting ads stitched onto their harnesses – wiggle and wag as they tout an advertiser's logo. In packs of three or more, the canine billboards and their handlers appear where people gather, at both events and pedestrian-friendly locales.

What you can do: Companies advertising on dogs include:

Snow Country ski shops: Online feedback form

The Learning Annex, a publisher in New York City: Registration_NY@LearningAnnex.com

Pure Lip: Online feedback form

Please write to them and tell them what you think of their intrusive advertising.

The company responsible for turning dogs into ads is K9 Billboards. You can reach them at webmaster@k9billboards.com.

April 19, 2002

Ads That Get Under Your Skin

If you think of your body as a temple, watch out – because advertisers think of your body as a marketing medium. The following is excerpted from an article in USA Today:

Omnipresent advertisers are exploring their final frontier: ad ''tattoos'' on human bodies.

Tonya Harding, Todd Bridges and Danny Bonaduce sported temporary tattoos for online casino Golden Palace in Fox's recent tacky but highly rated Celebrity Boxing show.

The trio join middleweight champion Bernard ''The Executioner'' Hopkins, who has worn the casino's Internet address on his back in bouts. NBA star Rasheed Wallace was approached to wear ad tattoos last season, but his agent passed.

Ad tattoos also offer almost free exposure. Golden Palace paid only the talent, not Fox, for tattoos seen by 15.5 million U.S. viewers. Web visitors rose 200% in the 24 hours after the March 13 show, and Golden Palace now is recruiting more for its ''celebrity body billboard'' plan, says spokesman Jeff Bernstein.

More than 20 fighters have been paid varying amounts. Hopkins has made about $100,000, while the Celebrity Boxing trio will make ''low five figures'' apiece, says Bernstein.

The Nevada Athletic Commission has tried to ban [the tattoos], saying they ''demean'' the sport of boxing.

What you can do: Please write to Golden Palace Online Casino and ask them to stop advertising on athletes' bodies: admin@goldenpalace.com.

April 15, 2002

Greasy Street Spam

As you know, street spam is a form of intrusive advertising we don't have much patience for.

A bicycle retailer spent the weekend putting up illegal, intrusive signs on street poles along the Connecticut shoreline – as many as 20 per intersection. And when the store owner realized that angry citizens were taking down the signs, he put up twice as many, smearing the edges of many of the signs with axle grease to make them unpleasant to remove. So not only do we have illegal littering and intrusive advertising, we have a pollutant (axle grease) ready to be washed into the groundwater.

Please write or call the advertiser, Zane's Bicycles, and ask them to stop their intrusive, polluting advertising tactics.

Christopher Zane, President
Phone: 800-551-2453
E-mail: info@zanes.com
Online feedback form

April 8, 2002

Yahoo! More Spam!

Even if you've opted out of receiving marketing messages from Yahoo!, the company ha s decided to reset your preferences to accept junk mail, as this excerpt from an article on MSNBC explains:

Tired of spam you're getting at your free Yahoo! e-mail account? Get ready for more. Tucked inside a privacy policy change the company made this week was notice that more Yahoo! e-mail marketing offers were coming even if users had formerly indicated they were unwanted.

Yahoo! granted itself permission to spam by creating a new "marketing preferences" page that lets users pick "yes or no" to specific categories of marketing pitches. The problem is, Yahoo! set every users' option to "yes" even if long ago, they indicated they never wanted any Yahoo! spam.

Users who don't want marketing offers from Yahoo have 60 days to do the following: Visit the user profile preferences page at http://edit.my.yahoo.com/config/eval_profile; select "Edit your marketing preferences" from within the Member Information section; and individually change selections in a series of marketing categories from "yes" to "no." In e-mail marketing lingo, the process is known as "opt-out."

But even performing that slightly cumbersome operation is no guarantee that Yahoo! marketing offers won't come, since the fi rm reserves the right to add marketing categories at any time.

What else you can do: Write or call Jerry Yang, director of Yahoo!, and ask him to stop deceiving Yahoo! users by resetting their marketing preferences.

Yahoo! Inc.
701 First Avenue
Sunnyvale, CA 94089
Phone: 408-349-3300
Fax: 408-349-3301

April 4, 2002

Street Spam Slowdown

You may have read our newsletters about street spam – those ugly, intrusive signs that trumpet "Lose Weight Fast!" or "Work from Home!" Many of those signs are the doings of Herbalife distributors. Herbalife is a network marketing company that sells health-related products. Herbalife distributors make money by selling products and by recruiting more distributors into the company.

After seeing our towns littered with eyesore (and usually illegal) signs, Herbalife finally took action. Below is a letter from Herbalife's Senior VP of Finance and Compliance that describes the company's new rules for Herbalife distributors:

Effective April 30, 2002, Distributors may not post any sign on (1) any public property utility pole, street light, traffic light, parking meter, traffic sign or any other publicly owned property in, or on adjacent to any public street, highway or other roar rights-of-way or (2) on any private property without the express permission of the owner of such property. This restriction will apply even if any federal, state or local ordinance, law or regulation allows such postings of signs. Herbalife may require currently posted signs violating this policy to be removed by the offending Distributor.

Fines: 1st Violation - a warning for violations deemed by Herbalife to be inadvertent in its sole and absolute discretion: otherwise a fine up to 25% of such Distributor's total gross earnings from Herbalife for the month prior to the date of such violation (with a minimum fine of $100).

2nd Violation - a fine up to 50% of such Distributor's total gross earnings from Herbalife for the month prior to the date of such violation (with a minimum of $250).

3rd Violation - suspension or termination of the Distributor in Herbalife's sole and absolute discretion.

We have also asked our corporate staff to review our marketing materials and delete reference to signs as a marketing method, and we will be contacting sign manufacturers to inform them of our new policy.

What you can do: If you see any Herbalife signs after April 30, 2002, take down the phone number and Web site address (if there is one) and send the information to:

Tim Sweeney
Senior Vice President, Finance and Compliance
Herbalife International
9800 La Cienega Blvd.
Inglewood, CA 90301
Phone: 310-410-9600
Fax: 310-258-7022

Ask him to enforce the new rules with the sign spammer.

You can learn more about street spam and laws governing it at Citizens Against Ugly Street Spam.

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