What a world of pure and unflinching justice we could then live in!  To walk around knowing that the slogans and invitations on billboards, newspaper ads and television were all required by law to be true, and that onerous fines and the shame of the public eye awaited the occasional miscreant who would stray from this noble code.  No need to worry about being deceived or misled as a consumer; we could always have confidence that advertisers would stand by their claims.

Like I said, I was young.

But at the risk of sounding curmudgeonly, I do think there’s been a notable shift in the standards we hold marketers and public figures to when it comes to truth in advertising.  Seems like somewhere around the mid 1990′s, we kind of gave up on it.

Was it when the Coke vs. Pepsi wars heated up?  Or maybe it was when product manufacturing was being outsourced to other countries and business owners became disconnected from quality controls in their production processes?  Or maybe it was when we stopped expecting politicians to tell the truth and started betting on just how outrageous their lies were.  Or maybe The Internet made it so much more difficult to police advertising claims that no one even bothers anymore unless it’s a particularly egregious case.

But there are more important things to worry about, right?  Caveat emptor and everybody for themselves, and let’s focus on the national debt or poverty or obesity, right?

I’m not so sure.  I think deceptive marketing practices deserve more of the blame for the state of the world than they get. I’m glad to hear that some high schools and colleges are teaching young people to be more aware of how marketing influences their buying choices, but the majority of us are still very much subject to the power of the marketing machine.  And when that machine is telling us to do things that are against our own best interests, it matters.

A few recent examples I’ve heard or seen just driving around town:

“Fast and fresh!”
Many fast food restaurants caught on long ago that fast food was associated with unhealthy eating, and that dietary advice was shifting toward recommendations of freshly prepared food with more natural ingredients.  The end result is the self-contradiction that you can have mass-produced food from a restaurant that is both “fast” (because it was pre-prepared halfway across the country in a warehouse and trucked to you frozen or full of preservatives) and “fresh” (because it has a piece of lettuce or tomato on it that was recently washed).  Or, “we have a salad on our menu, so we offer healthy eating options for everyone!” This undermines people who are trying to make healthier eating choices for themselves and their children by convincing them they can have it both ways, and it undermines local/regional food producers who actually ARE bringing you fresh food that you could prepare within a few days for a healthy meal.

“Hurry in to our store to save!”
I heard this one on the radio this morning.  ”Be the hero of your household’s budget,” the ad proclaimed.  They want you to come in to the store and spend money so that you can “save” money.  Buy things you might not have bought otherwise and might not need, so that you can feel good you’re getting them at a slightly lower price than…someone else somewhere else might or might not be selling them for.   This approach twists the notion that “saving money is good” into the idea that you have to spend money to save money.  No wonder we have unprecedented levels of personal debt and bankruptcy.

“For a limited time only!”
This one is tried and true: the idea that a time pressure will almost always result in consumers making different choices than they would make given time to think through the value of what they’re getting.  ”I might not have bought a case of gummy bears THIS week, but surely I’ll need a case in the coming year or two, and this sale ends TODAY!”  Marketers are telling us that rational responses are not to be trusted and that our gut instincts are what we should go with.  Instant gratification is okay because…then you’ll be gratified, and that’s all that matters, right!?

There are many, many more.  And I’m sure none of them are all that surprising to you, because again, we’ve come to accept that marketers are trying to mess with our sense of reality, and that we should just deal with it the best we can.

But why do we accept that?  Why are we willing to subject ourselves to that dance of pain when all we get out of it is some cheap plastic crap, stomach aches and buyer’s remorse?  I’m accepting comments for a limited time only.

I try not to give my my money to companies that practice false or misleading advertising most blatantly. But for me, one of the long-term solutions is to be very, VERY intentional about how I market myself and the products or services I’m associated with.

When I market my own business and our technical services, I try to make sure we speak plainly and clearly about what we can and cannot do, so that no one is misled and no end result is hyped up.

When I tell people who I am and what I stand for, I’m careful to note complexity and messiness where it exists.

When I talk about my qualifications for being voted into elected office, I’m careful not to spin or inflate my experience and accomplishments beyond what’s real, and to give other people credit where it’s due.

When I mess up or say something that might be misleading, I try to go back to correct it as soon as I can.

Sometimes it’s harder to be accurate and honest than it is to be catchy and broadly appealing.  Maybe it’s that younger version of myself still wandering around in oblivion waiting for the FTC to make it all better, but I still hope for a world where we all practice – and expect – truth in advertising at every level.

Them: “Please fill out our online form and we’ll get back to you right away!”

You in online form: “Hi.  I’m trying to find the button that does the thing I want, and your documentation says it should be there but it’s not – can you tell me how to do the thing I want?”

Them: “Thank you for opening your tech support case – your question is very important to us.  We will get back to you very soon now.”

Them: “Hi there, my name is Tech Support Rep#2342 and I’m going to be assisting you with your question.”

Them: “It’s me, Rep#2342 again, and I wanted to let you know that you can find out everything you’d ever want to know about the button you’re looking for on our online knowledgebase, which is at http:….  I hope you enjoy all the information that will be at your fingertips there.”

You: “Acutally, I’m writing you because your online documentation doesn’t match up with what I’m seeing in reality.  Can you tell me how to do the thing I want?”

Them: “According to our records, your support case was successfully resolved.  Please take this online survey telling us how great we did at helping you.”

You: “No, it’s not resolved, I still don’t know how to do the thing I want.  Please answer my question.”

Them: “Hi there, my name is Tech Support Rep#5324 and I’m going to be assisting you with your question.”

Them: “Have you tried clicking on the button that does the thing you want? You can learn more about it in our online knowledgebase, which is at http:…”

You: “The button is not there.”

Them: “That’s strange, according to our online documentation, the button should be there.  Are you sure that it’s not there?”

You: “The button is not there.”

Them: “You haven’t paid for Gold Level Tech Support which includes the ability to contact us by phone or email, so I’m afraid I will have to refer you to our online knowledgebase.  I hope you enjoy all the information that will be at your fingertips there.”

You: “It’s not a matter of knowledge.  Your system is broken.  The button is not where it should be.”

Them: “I understand that you are saying the button is not there.  I am going to consult with our software engineers to try to understand what might be causing this issue.”

Them: “According to our records, your support case was successfully resolved.  Please take this online survey telling us how great we did at helping you.”

You: “My eyes are bleeding all over me and they won’t stop until you tell me how to do the thing I want.  Please re-open this case.”

Them: “Hi there, my name is Tech Support Rep#1434 and I’m going to be assisting you with your question.”

Them: “I see that you are having trouble with a missing button in our system.  This is a known issue that we are all already aware of here.  It’s so widely known and talked about in our office that we have fliers up on the wall about it.  Internal movies have been made about this issue.  There are inside jokes going back months.  But so far, we haven’t published any information about it for our customers to see, so each time someone asks about it, they think they’re the only one having that problem.  Only the really persistent ones make it this far – congratulations.”

You: <speechless>

The article contains some interviews with downtown business owners, some perspective on the history of the Main Street organization there, and some talk of renewed activity from merchants and business owners (myself among them) in helping make the area thrive.  But there’s something missing from the picture the article paints.

One key angle that the article glosses over is the role that the rest of the community plays in creating and maintaining a thriving downtown.  While there’s certainly some role for business owners and merchants to play in creating a thriving downtown, it’s not entirely their burden to bear.  Retail districts live and die by the shopping choices of their customers, and so it seems important to recognize in any conversation about the health of a downtown that at least some of it is dictated by the “consumer culture” of the surrounding community.

It would be interesting to interview some “regular citizens” and ask them where they tend to shop, and how they perceive the downtown area.  “Given the choice between going downtown to support a business there and going to the mall or a big box store, how do you decide?”  Are they willing to pay a little more for products and services knowing those dollars stay in the community longer (thus supporting the long-term health of the area), or will they always prioritize convenience and the lowest available price?

It also seems worth looking at the environment of governmental and political support surrounding downtown.  Is it possible that city, county and state laws might be negatively impacting the ability of downtown business to thrive?  Is it possible that our approach to zoning, transportation, taxpayer-funded economic development and taxation are favoring non-local chain businesses over those who would choose to start and grow a small business in the place they live?  Is it possible that politics and personalities are at times standing in the way of a thriving central business district instead of nurturing it?

I’ve blogged about these ideas before:

The value we get from a strong and diverse local business community is hard to see when compared as a “bottom line deal” against the attractions of the “big box” stores. And I’m not suggesting that these larger retailers don’t have a place in a strong local economy. But my hope is that we’ll see the Target store closing as yet another indicator of an important trend. By putting so many of our eggs in baskets that lack the personal ties and community investments that our local businesses are built around, we set ourselves up for even greater disappointments and more noticeable disappearance of the business ethic, entrepreneurship, and innovative spirit around which Richmond has historically been built.

There’s no question that the economic health of our downtown is based on complex systems with lots of variables.  The business owners and downtown merchants are mostly already doing their part – they’re running their businesses and they’re engaged in the life of the business district and the wider community.  As a small business owner myself, I know that there’s probably not a whole lot of time left over for those hard-working folks to ALSO do the marketing, advocacy, legislative and policy work needed to help downtown compete against strip malls and big box stores.

So what role does the rest of the Richmond community have in creating a thriving main street area?  How do your choices make a difference in the health of downtown?

Trying to stop getting unsolicited postal mail from Comcast

I’m not a Comcast customer, haven’t been for a long time, and never at my current address. I get postcards, letters and brochures from them on a regular basis – sometimes several times a week.  It’s annoying and wasteful.  I searched the Comcast website and the Internet at large for a while for a web-based form to get on a “do not send me mail” list, and couldn’t find one.  I called their 800 number and hung up after too many minutes on hold.  I finally sent in a generic inquiry through their online form, providing the addresses I wanted removed.

Done, right?  Nope.

The first response asked me to come onto their website and fill out another form with my contact information so that I could join an online chat with them about getting off their mailing list.  I wrote back and said “no, I’m not filling out another form, you have what you need.”  The next response said (paraphrasing) “we really need you to join our online chat so that we can get your Comcast account number.”  I wrote back and said, “I’m not a Comcast customer, you have what you need to take me off your list.”  I channeled Jack Bauer: do it now.

The next response, quoting:  “I understand that you want to be included in the Do Not Mail List. We appreciate that you have given us this opportunity to communicate with you and address your concerns as quickly as possible.  I have forwarded your concern to the appropriate management team for your request to be processed Chris.  Rest assured that the request will be honored as quickly as possible, but definitely within 30 days.”

So, if you want to be removed from Comcast’s postal mailing list, all it takes is a phone call, an online form submission, and four clarifying e-mail messages so that your request can then be forwarded to a management team for processing within a month.  Lovely FAIL.

A bagel shop on 5th Street in Richmond

Before I was all the way in the door the woman at the service counter shouted at me across the room, “hi, can I help you?”  In the eternity that seemed to pass between that moment and when I was close enough to answer without yelling back, I tried to suppress the feeling that this would be a FAIL.

But as the server continued to have conversations with co-workers while taking my order, hope started to slip away.

When I asked to have my order just wrapped in paper and not in Styrofoam and she said “okay” but didn’t pass that along to the person preparing my order, I knew my smile was not long for this world.

When I got a spritz of cleaning solution from her as she wiped the counter-top right next to me (still chatting away), my smile returned, this time with little twists of approaching insanity at its ends.

And when the server who packaged my order in Styrofoam anyway glared at me as I politely said, “oh, actually, I’d asked for paper instead of Styrofoam,” huffed and puffed as she fixed it, and propelled it across the counter at me as she turned away, a sense of FAIL calm arrived.

There’s a peace that comes with the clarity of  “oh yeah, I don’t have to come back here again.”

Ordering from Gimmees.com

At Summersault, we recently ordered some custom-made Yo-Yos from Gimmees.com for our open house event back in March.  The order was delayed and there were some communication issues that amplified the inconvenience of that delay.  But after I commented on the issue on Twitter, the owner of the company called me directly and made it right, and we got the order in time for our event.   WIN for Twitter and Gimmees.com.

Customer service lessons:

1. Don’t make simple things complicated. If you’re a company that sends out gazillions of postal mailings every day, have a really clear process for letting people get off that mailing list.
2. Hire staff who can empathize with your customers` experiences. If they can’t, train them better, or get them away from your customers as fast as possible.
3. When something goes wrong, act quickly and boldly to make it right. It’s true, “a happy customer tells one friend, an unhappy customer tells everybody.”

Any recent FAIL or WIN customer service experiences in your life that you’d like to share?

1) The Fireplace Shop at 1000 North F Street in Richmond is an amazing little brick complex that showcases all that can be done with wood and other heat sources. From traditional fireplaces to wood burning stoves to corn pellet stoves to crazy other conflagrant configurations, it was quite a wonderland of temperature control. With the added bits of atmosphere like lazy cats sprawled across warm surfaces, fireplace and chimney sweep nostalgia everywhere, and the hustle-bustle of workers in workshops catering to the demands of the cold season, it was a nice place just to be and observe. The store also adjoins a ceramic tile store (which sells the locally made Terra Green Ceramics line) and a brick/stone store, so you can knock out quite a bit of home improvement planning in one place. I can’t imagine there’s one of these in every community these days, and I’m certainly grateful to have one here.

2) Rohan India is a new-ish Indian Food restaurant in Oxford, Ohio that offers slightly faster access to this cuisine from Richmond than similar options in Dayton, Cincinnati or Indianapolis. The Chicken Shahi Korma with Mushrooms dish I had was probably the best Indian dish I’ve had at any location in the region, and when I got a spice level of 6 (out of 10), they really came through with that. The proximity of this dining option may be just enough to balance out the problems with the atmosphere and service – several large screen televisions blaring music videos, sports games, etc. dominated the visual landscape, and we had to play the “forced eye contact and hand waving” game at times just to get a server to pay attention. But overall, it was a fine experience, and quickly becoming a destination for Richmondites – I’ve heard at least three other distinct mentions of it this weekend alone.

3) At Home Kitchen and Gourmet at 414 North 10th (in “The Loft” where Ghyslain is) is a new location brought to us by the folks at Warm Glow Candles. Right now the shop features a variety of kitchen and bath items with Warm Glow candles sprinkled amongst them. Many of the items seemed “pricey” for Richmond, but they were generally quite unique and beautiful, and compared to a Williams-Sonoma visit in Chicago, probably a good value. The clerk who checked us out indicated that the inventory was largely just overstock from the main Warm Glow store in Centerville, and that after the first of the year, they’d be reworking it to focus much more on being a comprehensive kitchen and bath supplier. Even though I’m not one to go shopping for such things regularly, it was just great to see a locally owned place like this pop up here.

On top of that, I got to attend the Alternative Holiday Bazaar at the Clear Creek Food Cooperative, which showcased locally-made crafts and gifts on Saturday against the backdrop of live music and smiling faces – the items will be on sale all this week too.

Seeing these places, these events, these people reminds me that there are people investing anew in this community and in the surrounding ones, people making a living here and doing it in such fun and interesting ways – I’m thankful for that.

Our culture likes to take the old and repackage it as the new so it’s more exciting and engaging. I don’t have any problem with that per se – there can be something creative and innovative in finding different ways to present ideas, world-views, ways of living so that they’re more accessible to more people. We all go through different kinds of personal discovery about what we’re capable of, so why not have a “new movement” that helps support and nurture that for folks who are in that place right now?

This is what I thought I was being pitched when I got an invitation to subscribe to Ready Made magazine, which presents itself as “the only do-it-yourself (DIY)/lifestyle magazine for young people. It entertains and informs through DIY projects for fast-evolving lifestyles.” It sounded like a good support resource for learning more about self-sufficient living. I showed the invite to Anna Lisa and we both agreed that it looked like it would be useful, AND that we were excited such a publication existed at all. But when the first issue arrived, it only took me a few hours before I knew we’d be canceling the subscription. Here’s why:

Despite a couple of useful articles, the issue of Ready Made that we received (Oct/Nov 2008) seemed to be a thinly veiled handbook for excelling in the consumerist, image-obsessed culture of which the DIY movement (as I understand it) is inherently critical.

The publication itself is very glossy and polished, full of flashy ads and artwork, airbrushed models, and beautiful photos that set the bar super high for even the most dedicated do-it-yourselfer. It feels like an issue of “Teen Better Homes and Gardens,” not a rag that is all about making the most of sufficiency in resources. I can see how this style would engage a younger audience used to the glitz, and I won’t begrudge them their success if indeed the approach works, but I found it to be an unfortunate mental disconnect between the message and the presentation.

The DIY projects that they cover range from the somewhat practical (various pumpkin recipes, how to give an effective presentation, building a loft bed, storing your bicycle on the ceiling) to fun and quirky (various pet furniture, bamboo drum brushes) to the outright gratuitous (designer miniaturist models?). And in the end, many articles were just an introduction to more products you can buy…a $54 cushion to hold your produce on your kitchen counter-top, a $179 work table, a $200 gadget holder. And that’s in addition to the various free-standing ads for cars, beauty products, alcohol and bottled water.

Again, I’m not saying this kind of publication won’t be interesting or useful to someone out there…it’s just about expectations. If I’d picked up a standard home improvement magazine and seen some of this stuff I would have been thrilled about it, but when I was expecting a publication to capture the DIY ethic and got Ready Made instead, I was disappointed. I have enough troubling or misleading marketing images hitting me every day that I don’t need to pay for a subscription to a magazine that unnecessarily glamorizes the otherwise moderately useful bits of information.

Ready Made magazine might be a great introduction to the concept and practice of DIY for a high-school or college-aged person who is otherwise thoroughly engrossed in the culture of “when you need something or something breaks, you go shopping.” But for someone who’s already used to doing it themselves, I’d suggest you skip the magazine subscription, use their online project archive as needed, and move on to other, more authentic DIY resources instead.

The pal-item.com Terms of Service (TOS) are the policies and terms that the Palladium-Item and its parent corporation, Gannett, have set forth for the use of their website at pal-item.com.  When you visit the site in your web browser, you are subject to those terms.  Opinions vary about whether the TOS can be considered a legal contract between you and the Palladium-Item, and how enforceable the terms might be.  But one thing is clear: as websites like pal-item.com become more interactive and encourage more user submission of content, it’s in your best interest to understand these terms and how they affect you.

The Nature of the Agreement, and Making Changes

Here’s the excerpt we’re looking at for this installment:

“Accessing the Site, in any manner, whether automated or otherwise, constitutes use of the Site and your agreement to be bound by these Terms of Service.

We reserve the right to change these Terms of Service or to impose new conditions on use of the Site, from time to time, in which case we will post the revised Terms of Service on this website. By continuing to use the Site after we post any such changes, you accept the Terms of Service, as modified.”

Let’s look at that first sentence in more depth: accessing the site in any manner constitutes an agreement to be bound by the terms of service.  This essentially means that by opening up a browser window and typing in pal-item.com, you are consenting to be bound (legally bound?  Who knows!) by the terms of service.  These terms could be construed to mean that even if you just click on a link from another website and you’re not even sure that you’re coming to the Pal-Item.com site, you’re still bound by the terms.

This is a fairly standard clause in “Terms of Service” documents, but continues to be an entirely unenforceable one from the perspective of the average user.  In any case where a dispute actually arises related to the terms, the paper would probably have to show your intent to “visit” and “use” the site more than in just a casual fashion.  Still, it’s good to be aware that from their perspective, you’re bound to their terms the second you step onto the site.

Now let’s look at the part about updating the terms: “We reserve the right to change these Terms of Service or to impose new conditions on use of the Site, from time to time, in which case we will post the revised Terms of Service on this website. By continuing to use the Site after we post any such changes, you accept the Terms of Service, as modified.”

This essentially says that the moment someone on the Palladium-Item staff makes a change to the Terms of Service page, as soon as you visit the site after that change, you’re bound by the new conditions, even if you haven’t read them yet.

This is also a common provision of many terms of service documents, and is also pretty much unenforceable.  In July of 2007, the Ninth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals ruled that website operators cannot hold visitors to the site solely responsible for visiting the updated TOS document in order to be bound by their terms.  See Douglas v. U.S. District Court for the Central District of California, 2007 WL 2069542, 9th Cir. (Cal.) Others have suggested that site operators at least give something like 30 days notice after a change before it takes effect, and that they actually describe the changes that are made instead of assuming you can compare two versions of the document.  We know that the Pal-Item has our e-mail address on file if we have an account here – they could send out an automated e-mail notifying us of the change, as many kinds of financial institutions are now required to do in similar cases.

This also raises questions about what kinds of changes the Palladium-Item might make to the terms.  While it’s unlikely that they would introduce a new clause that says “every time you visit the site, you shall incur a debt to the Gannett Corporation in the form of $10,000 or the delivery of your firstborn child,”  it’s still of concern that a document intended to be a contract can be updated without one of the parties to the contract participating in that process.  The concern is amplified when you’re submitting personal or original content to the site – how will that information be used now?  And even if you’re okay with how it is used now, how will it be used in the future when the terms are modified?

I certainly find that to be food for thought.

Intellectual Property, and What They Do With What You Post

In this installment, I’d like to look at the intellectual property rights aspect of the TOS.  Here’s the first relevant part:

“…unless explicitly authorized in these Terms of Service or by the owner of the materials, you may not modify, copy, reproduce, republish, upload, post, transmit, translate, sell, create derivative works, exploit, or distribute in any manner or medium (including by email or other electronic means) any material from the Site. You may, however, from time to time, download and/or print one copy of individual pages of the Site for your personal, non-commercial use, provided that you keep intact all copyright and other proprietary notices.”

Let’s break that down a bit.  The first sentence says that basically, you are not allowed to use any of the information on the Pal-Item.com in any way that involves copying it or redistributing it.  The rest of the paragraph notes that you are allowed to make a single reproduction of a page on the site, as long as it’s just printed out or saved as a file on your computer.

Here are some examples of the kinds of things that this clause makes a violation of the TOS, as I understand it:

• Including an excerpt from a story on the pal-item.com site in your own weblog or website
• Sending your friend an e-mail with a headline and the first paragraph of an article pasted into it, even if it then links back to the full article on pal-item.com
• Printing off two or more copies of an article for distribution to your friends and family because you found it interesting

Let’s move on to the clauses related to the intellectual property license you give to the Pal-Item when you use the site, which I’ll break down into chunks:

“…when you submit or post any material, you are granting us, and anyone authorized by us, a royalty-free, perpetual, irrevocable, non-exclusive, unrestricted, worldwide license to use, copy, modify, transmit, sell, exploit, create derivative works from, distribute, and/or publicly perform or display such material, in whole or in part, in any manner or medium, now known or hereafter developed, for any purpose. “

This basically says that when you submit information to the site – such as a comment on a story, a photo, a blog post, a forum comment, etc. – the Palladium-Item can do whatever they want with it.   For example:

• If you submit a photo that someone else finds valuable, the Palladium-Item can sell it to them and keep all of the profit from the sale.  They could even just use your photographs in their own print products, without passing any royalties or other payment on to you.
• If you submit a blog post that is especially insightful, the Palladium-Item can publish it in their print edition as editorial content, again without compensating you.
• If you submit a 1,000 word comment in the forums, the paper can edit it down to 100 words and republish it as an alternate version of your comments.

All of this can be done without asking for your permission, or without even telling you about it.

Here’s the next part:

“The foregoing grant shall include the right to exploit any proprietary rights in such posting or submission, including, but not limited to, rights under copyright, trademark, service mark or patent laws under any relevant jurisdiction.”

This basically says again that even if the information you submit to the site is under some sort of copyright or trademark protection – such as a cross-posting of a blog entry from another site where you are a blog author with your own copyright terms, or such as an excerpt of a book you’re writing – the paper can still choose to sell it, edit it down, republish it elsewhere, etc.

“Also, in connection with the exercise of such rights, you grant us, and anyone authorized by us, the right to identify you as the author of any of your postings or submissions by name, email address or screen name, as we deem appropriate.”

This says that the paper can attribute to you any content that you submit.  This is generally a good thing – you get credit for your words and photos – but the language doesn’t make clear whether or not the attribution would go beyond what is publicly visible to the rest of the users of the site.  So, if you believe that you’re posting a controversial comment from behind the relative anonymity of a screen name, you might still see your real name or actual e-mail address next to your comments if they’re re-used by the paper elsewhere.  All they have to do is deem that to be appropriate.

In a separate document, the Pal-Item.com Privacy Policy, they state that “we reserve the right to use, and to disclose to third parties, all of the information collected from and about you while you are using the Site in any way and for any purpose.”  While I’m sure that the intent of the Pal-Item.com staff is good when it comes to the disclosure of your personal information, it’s still worth noting that, according to their terms, they can still technically tell the rest of the world anything they know about you, whenever they want, and possibly as a part of attributing your comments on the site to you.

This might change how you think about what you post on the site.

I’ll note here that I am not an employee or affiliate of the Palladium-Item or Gannett, and do not represent or speak for them in any way.  I am also not a lawyer; you should consult a qualified legal counsel if you have questions about the meaning and implications of these terms.

Privacy, Miscellaneous Clauses, and Conclusions

In this final installment, I’d like to highlight a few miscellaneous clauses, and make some overall conclusions about the terms of service as a whole.

Let’s start here: “It is a condition of your use of the Site that you do not… Use the Site to post or transmit any unlawful, threatening, abusive, libelous, defamatory, obscene, vulgar, pornographic, profane or indecent information of any kind.”

As with much of the language I’ve looked at, this is pretty common fare in the world of TOS documents, but it does always raise the question of who gets to decide what material is “abusive” or “vulgar” or “indecent.”  Speaking from my own experience, I’ve historically found a significant percentage of the comments posted on the Pal-Item forums to qualify as abusive or defamatory, but that doesn’t mean anyone else necessarily would.

The legal interpretation of such terms, with the exception of cases where there are clear definitions, usually comes back to community standards.  I hope that users of the Pal-Item.com site have enough of a sense of what the community standards are to avoid violating it, but I’m not sure that’s the case.

“It is a condition of your use of the Site that you do not… Use the Site to post, transmit or in any way exploit any information, software or other material for commercial purposes, or that contains advertising.”

I’m just not sure quite what this means.  If it’s requesting that we not ever make use of the content of the site in a way that might lead to making money, that may be a difficult one for the members of the business community who do look to the Pal-Item for information about itself.  If it’s requesting that we not ever post a link to another commercial resource or website with the intent of having someone else make use of it, that also seems difficult to follow…if someone asks for a list of local pizza restaurant websites, is it a violation to respond with the list and links?  I’m not sure.

Regarding termination of accounts, the policy says, “We may cancel or terminate your right to use the Site or any part of the Site at any time without notice.”

I certainly understand the desire to protect the Pal-Item site by exercising this kind of total control over it, but this kind of approach does tend to hinder true community engagement in an online conversation.  In “real life,” we don’t expect to be unconditionally ejected from a community space without some sort of conversation or advance warning.  The Pal-Item.com staff have historically done a good job of establishing a process for banning someone from the site that gives them an opportunity to shape up, so this shouldn’t be too much of a concern.  But as with other clauses, it’s worth being aware of as you decide how to participate here.

In the last installment I noted that I’d look further at the Pal-Item.com Privacy Policy.  As I noted then, the policy pretty clearly states that the paper can make use of the information it gathers about you and your use of the site in just about any way it wants, including handing it over to some “third party” of their choosing without notice to you.

A related clause notes that the advertisers on the site may also collect information about you separately from the Pal-Item, and that they may have their own privacy policies:

“These third-party advertisers and ad servers may use the information they collect to help present their advertisements, to help measure and research the advertisements’ effectiveness, or for other purposes. The use and collection of your information by these third-party advertisers and ad servers is governed by the relevant third-party’s privacy policy and is not covered by our Privacy Policy… If you have any concerns about a third party’s use of cookies or web beacons or use of your information, you should visit that party’s website and review its privacy policy.”

This essentially makes it our responsibility to check the privacy policies of every advertiser that places ads on the site and that might be gathering information about your browsing habits.  While this is by no means new to the world of online advertising, it would always be nice if the site hosting the ads took a more proactive approach to setting privacy standards for its advertisers when it comes to its users` data.

“Please also note that as our business grows, we may buy or sell various assets. In the unlikely event that we sell some or all of our assets, or one or more of our websites is acquired by another company, information about our users may be among the transferred assets.”

It’s worth noting that this basically means that even if you trust the current Pal-Item.com and Gannett staff to do reasonable things with the data they collect about you, there’s no guarantee that it won’t eventually be sold off to another entity that is less worthy of your trust.

I think that’s all of the specific clauses I wanted to cover in this discussion.  I’ve obviously singled out phrasing that is potentially troubling to me or others, but there is plenty of other language in the policies that are useful and positive, and that provide some kinds of protection for users (e.g. the Privacy Policy discusses the measures the Pal-Item takes to protect children in their potential use of the site).

But for me, all of the concerns add up to one primary conclusion: as written, the Terms of Service and Privacy Policy do not adequately protect my interests as a potential participant in the Palladium-Item’s online conversation space and interactive components. Whatever interest I have in blogging on the site is mitigated by concerns about how my submitted content could be re-used or sold without my permission.  Whatever interest I have in submitting photos or “My P-I” stories is mitigated by the same concern.  And whatever desire I have to try to engage fellow users of the site is tainted by concerns about how those conversations might be used against me at a later time, especially if I run afoul of the Palladium-Item’s or Gannett’s own corporate interests.

I would even go further to say that it’s a danger to the health of our public discourse that the Pal-Item.com site is held up as a primary online space for conversing about the issues that matter to us most, when the space itself is, by way of these policies, hostile to the kind of vulnerability, mutual respect, and protection of individual contributions necessary for such conversations.

The great thing is, these policies could be changed to address those concerns. I’m sure you’ll join me in chuckling at the remote likelihood of this, given that the language probably comes from a corporate legal office that is charged with protecting corporate assets, not encouraging open exchange and protecting the interests of site users.  BUT, it is possible, and I wouldn’t be bothering with this series of posts if I didn’t think the Palladium-Item staff might at least take some of these issues under consideration when we share our concerns.

In the end, you may still choose to participate there, as I’m sure many will continue to do.  Heck, I may still choose to participate there in some form.  But I hope these discussions have been helpful in illuminating some of the factors that affect how you participate, and what can be done with the information you submit to the Palladium-Item.

If you have your own comments or questions about the Terms of Service document or related issues, feel free to post them here.

Thanks for reading!

Here’s my configuration (perhaps mostly for geeks, but hopefully also for anyone who’s interested):

I started with an old 433MHz Dell desktop system with a 3.2GB hard drive that Mark had laying around, and beefed its memory up to a whopping 128MB. Other than that, it’s vanilla hardware, probably something you could even find in a dumpster behind your friendly neighborhood office complex. I plugged it into a battery-backup power supply, connected it to my local network, and stuck it in a closet where the noise wouldn’t bother anyone.

From there, I decided to use the FREE trixbox PBX all-in-one telephony system, because trixbox (which is based on Asterisk) has all the software you need to run anything from a simple home phone system all the way up to an enterprise-level call center. Installing trixbox on the hardware was amazingly easy – I popped the CD in, rebooted, and it did the rest. It took care of installing the operating system, the phone system software, and all of the other packages I could ever want. When it was done, it pointed me to a web interface that I could use to administer the system from there. I practically didn’t even need to have a keyboard attached, and I certainly didn’t have to mess with logging in on the command line and puttering around with configuration files. And, I get visual displays of call activity, e-mail and web access to voicemail, vital stats on the hardware, and lots more. Wow. Did I mention it’s free?

At Summersault, we’re using IP phones, which are basically phones that plug into the network instead of into a phone line. This is convenient because you don’t have to run copper wire everywhere (that’s a good thing to keep in mind if you’re trying to convert a high school into a national communications center for a Presidential Debate, eh?), and I could do that at home too and just take advantage of my local network setup. But, I decided that I wanted the flexibility of using regular old phones that I had laying around (especially the one with a wireless handset), so I bought a Sangoma A200 card with 2 FXS ports on it. That’s basically a fancy way of saying I bought a thingamajig that went in the computer that allowed me to plug a phone into it.

Then I had to figure out what to tell my system about how to route phone calls. In other words, when I pick up a phone and punch in some numbers, where should the call go? That’s part of the beauty of a VOIP system…I can set things up however I want. I could have an extension for the kitchen, and one for the basement, and maybe a shortcut that goes straight to a family member’s home number, and…the possibilities are endless.

But I kept it simple, don’t worry. Long distance calls are routed out through the CallWithUs.com service, which charges a flat fee of 1.38 cents per minute (that’s $0.0138, Verizon) to calls in the U.S., and I can refill my account there through quick and easy PayPal payments. No federal taxes, no start up fees, no monthly charges. Beautiful.

Local calls are a different story. I *could* route them through CallWithUs, but it doesn’t feel right to pay a per-minute fee for something that is traditionally “standard” in a normal phone setup. I could call Verizon and have a physical land-line put in (my Sangoma card has a port for that too), and just route all my local calls there, but then I’d have those pesky monthly fees whether I used it or not. The solution? For now, I’m telling my VOIP system to talk to the VOIP system at Summersault, and use one of the company’s available phone lines for outgoing local calls. Cool!

(Just think about all of the business phone lines that sit around unused during evenings and weekends, and how we could save lots of dollars by making better use of them, especially as a part of good local infrastructure planning! Mark and I have even joked about making “local phone calls” an employment perk, but we’re not sure that would be a real selling point, yet.)

Incoming calls are a slightly different matter, and I haven’t gotten that far yet. CallWithUs, Sipphone and various other providers like them offer dedicated local phone numbers for dialing in (sort of like you can get with Skype) for as low as $6.50/month, usually with a certain number of incoming minutes free. I’m not sure we need that yet, but however it might get setup, the features for handling incoming calls in trixbox are extensive. We could have it ring right through, or go into a menu system (“press 5 if you are calling to sell something…”), or go to voicemail, or forward to a cell phone, or….phew. One thing at a time.

So, that’s the setup for now. It’s definitely overkill for my simple home needs, but I enjoyed putting it together as a part of a proof-of-concept, and it’s neat (as a geek, anyway) to have that kind of control over every aspect of your phone setup.

There are lots of places to turn to if you want to try some of this yourself. I learned a lot of what I know about VOIP and Asterisk-based phone systems through my work in transitioning Summersault’s phone system to that setup. I can certainly recommend the books Switching to VOIP and Asterisk: The Future of Telephony (which, in addition to being available in sturdy book form, is also available free to download). They’re definitely geared toward folks who are ready to dive into the guts of telephony software, but they’re still accessible to those just wanting to learn more about phone infrastructure and what’s possible with VOIP.

And of course, through Summersault, I’m available to consult on these matters for home and business use, though I can’t promise that I’d feel comfortable charging for all of my time, since it’s just so much darn fun.

Update on 10/16/2007: I’ve now added an incoming phone number (DID) to the setup, also through CallWithUs. At $6.50/month with 2,000 free minutes included, it seemed like a great deal when the need arose. And it’s especially nice that they let you set your own outbound caller-ID, so all of the calls appear to come from the new number, making return calls even easier. Nice!