Internet commerce is the most important channel for most businesses who either conduct e-commerce or using the internet to advertise and market services. For your internet marketing in Portland or Seattle  the recent actions by the Department of Justice against Megaupload  demonstrate how important security is and knowing who you are doing business with. In the world we live in is it possible to protect our interests while at the same time explore new avenues of exposure and marketing?

http://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/2012/January/12-crm-074.html

Department of Justice

Office of Public Affairs

WASHINGTON – Seven individuals and two corporations have been charged in the United States with running an international organized criminal enterprise allegedly responsible for massive worldwide online piracy of numerous types of copyrighted works, through Megaupload.com and other related sites, generating more than $175 million in criminal proceeds and causing more than half a billion dollars in harm to copyright owners, the U.S. Justice Department and FBI announced today on a topic of interest to anyone involved in Internet Marketing in Portland and Seattle.

This action is among the largest criminal copyright cases ever brought by the United States and directly targets the misuse of a public content storage and distribution site to commit and facilitate intellectual property crime…..

According to the indictment, for more than five years the conspiracy has operated websites that unlawfully reproduce and distribute infringing copies of copyrighted works, including movies – often before their theatrical release – music, television programs, electronic books, and business and entertainment software on a massive scale. The conspirators’ content hosting site, Megaupload.com, is advertised as having more than one billion visits to the site, more than 150 million registered users, 50 million daily visitors and accounting for four percent of the total traffic on the Internet. The estimated harm caused by the conspiracy’s criminal conduct to copyright holders is well in excess of $500 million. The conspirators allegedly earned more than $175 million in illegal profits through advertising revenue and selling premium memberships.

The indictment states that the conspirators conducted their illegal operation using a business model expressly designed to promote uploading of the most popular copyrighted works for many millions of users to download. The indictment alleges that the site was structured to discourage the vast majority of its users from using Megaupload for long-term or personal storage by automatically deleting content that was not regularly downloaded. The conspirators further allegedly offered a rewards program that would provide users with financial incentives to upload popular content and drive web traffic to the site, often through user-generated websites known as linking sites. The conspirators allegedly paid users whom they specifically knew uploaded infringing content and publicized their links to users throughout the world.

In addition, by actively supporting the use of third-party linking sites to publicize infringing content, the conspirators did not need to publicize such content on the Megaupload site. Instead, the indictment alleges that the conspirators manipulated the perception of content available on their servers by not providing a public search function on the Megaupload site and by not including popular infringing content on the publicly available lists of top content downloaded by its users.

As alleged in the indictment, the conspirators failed to terminate accounts of users with known copyright infringement, selectively complied with their obligations to remove copyrighted materials from their servers and deliberately misrepresented to copyright holders that they had removed infringing content. For example, when notified by a rights holder that a file contained infringing content, the indictment alleges that the conspirators would disable only a single link to the file, deliberately and deceptively leaving the infringing content in place to make it seamlessly available to millions of users to access through any one of the many duplicate links available for that file.

The indictment charges the defendants with conspiring to launder money by paying users through the sites’ uploader reward program and paying companies to host the infringing content.

The case is being prosecuted by the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Virginia and the Computer Crime & Intellectual Property Section in the Justice Department’s Criminal Division. The Criminal Division’s Office of International Affairs, Organized Crime and Gang Section, and Asset Forfeiture and Money Laundering Section also assisted with this case.

The investigation was initiated and led by the FBI at the National Intellectual Property Rights Coordination Center (IPR Center), with assistance from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s Homeland Security Investigations. Substantial and critical assistance was provided by the New Zealand Police, the Organised and Financial Crime Agency of New Zealand (OFCANZ), the Crown Law Office of New Zealand and the Office of the Solicitor General for New Zealand; Hong Kong Customs and the Hong Kong Department of Justice; the Netherlands Police Agency and the Public Prosecutor’s Office for Serious Fraud and Environmental Crime in Rotterdam; London’s Metropolitan Police Service; Germany’s Bundeskriminalamt and the German Public Prosecutors; and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police – Greater Toronto Area (GTA) Federal Enforcement Section and the Integrated Technological Crime Unit and the Canadian Department of Justice’s International Assistance Group. Authorities in the United Kingdom, Australia and the Philippines also provided assistance.

This case is part of efforts being undertaken by the Department of Justice Task Force on Intellectual Property (IP Task Force) to stop the theft of intellectual property. Attorney General Eric Holder created the IP Task Force to combat the growing number of domestic and international intellectual property crimes, protect the health and safety of American consumers, and safeguard the nation’s economic security against those who seek to profit illegally from American creativity, innovation and hard work. The IP Task Force seeks to strengthen intellectual property rights protection through heightened criminal and civil enforcement, greater coordination among federal, state and local law enforcement partners, and increased focus on international enforcement efforts, including reinforcing relationships with key foreign partners and U.S. industry leaders. To learn more about the IP Task Force, go towww.justice.gov/dag/iptaskforce .

This action is by far the largest ever taken by the DOJ against an internet company. Along with the foundation of support for SOPA, will it affect your Internet Marketing in Portland or Seattle ?

As of last week: Google is unrolling a Free PC operating system to rival Microsoft … Call it a touche’ to Microsoft’s recent attempt to tread on Google’s search engine turf with Bing. (Want to compare Bing vs. Google search engine results side-by-side? Check out http://bing-vs-google.com/)

Google pretty much much owns search engine land, but it only recently made a dent in the internet browser field with Chrome and it’s slight and simple

Office-like suite. The operating system, incidentally, will also be named Chrome, according to news reports.

Google made this last announcement a month after Microsoft launched Bing, its first search engine.

Chrome OS will be available in the second half of 2010.

Google is working with Acer, Asustek, Hewlett-Packard, Lenovo, Qualcomm and Texas Instruments on the project.

WEB- A new eye-tracking study performed by the folks over at Explido has ranked the “big three” (Google, Bing, Yahoo) against more specialized engines (WolframAlpha, Collecta, OneRiot), and a few foreign up-and-comers (Baidu,Yandex). This is key data for Businesses in Portland that are monitoring their SERP rankings.

The breakdown of the study is that the foreign sites are essentially using a “Google classic” format, though we expect to see more search-centric categorization in the future, along the lines of the big three.  Google continues to dominate in search results, but the Bing and Yahoo universal results seem to fare just as well.  A lot of the favoritism towards the big three appears to be user familiarity, so the social engines may become more popular in the future.  Utilities like Wolfram Alpha continue to struggle in the consumer market, but are quite useful for generalized information, which is the stated goal of the program.

All of this generally points toward an expected increase in topical search, with increasingly compartmentalized streams of information designed to satisfy the educated consumer.  Search marketers certainly will have their hands full for the forseeable future!

In a blog post, Google demonstrates how it traces a person’s eyes across search results pages.

The post reads, in part:

“Based on eye-tracking studies, we know that people tend to scan the search results in order. They start from the first result and continue down the list until they find a result they consider helpful and click it — or until they decide to refine their query … most users found what they were looking for among the first two results and they never needed to go further down the page.”

Google’s eye-tracking research helps advertisers to realize that the first search results page is the only one likely to be seen. Which is where good SEO and copywriting becomes worth its weight in gold…

You may feel the earth shake under your feet, but despite rumors to the contrary, we are in no way responsible for the recent succession of Earthquakes in San Diego in Southern California, even though we DID just roll out a hot new SEO model that has already caused rumblings in the SEO world:

On-Spec ads have traditionally been unofficial, proposed advertisements to ad agencies. They are usually from creative, “regular dudes” or grassroots startups who sit down at a computer and bang out ads that are much better than anything the suits could ever dream up, and The SMT has just started doing them beginning with a “Portland Jewelry” or “Portland Jeweler” campaign.
Remember that iPod Touch ad with the CSS soundtrack? That was created by an 18-year-old student attending Leeds University. Spec ads are usually edgy and fresh.

On-Spec is short for “on speculation”. It’s something you’re doing on your own to build your portfolio. This isn’t a “real” assignment. It’s material you’re creating to show potential clients or employers samples of your stuff. A real chance to flex your creative muscle.

It is work, such as SEO, that is done for a client without a contract or job order, for which the client will pay only if the work is to be used. When a job is done on speculation, the person doing the work takes the risk in the hope of making a profit, gaining a valuable credit, or for some other reason. In the SEO business, creative talent will often work on spec in order to establish a name in the industry.

For example, if you have no writing samples, you can write SEO on SPEC. You can take any SEO and give it your own personal touch. Make sure you clearly label it as SPEC SEO.

If you’ve always wanted to work in the SEO industry and you don’t have any experience, the dilemma can seem overhwelming. Many people figure they’ll never get a job in SEO for this very reason.

But there are ways around this obstacle.

Speculative SEOs are the key. These are SEOs you’ve created and hosted yourself.

Quick. Write an SEO site for one of the brands you see around you. You’ve just created a SPEC SEO, as it’s known in the industry. These SEOs show a potential employer/client your talent.

In your portfolio, you’ll really want to showcase your SEO.

Smaller agencies are generally more receptive to a portfolio full of SPEC SEO sites. Don’t rule out the smaller agencies in your search for an SEO position. It’s an excellent way to build up your portfolio so you can shed those SPEC SEOS in the future.

Another option to consider is an internship at a local SEO agency or a business with its own in-house web design team.

Internships at SEO agencies are competitive and you should research an agency to see their types of clients. This helps you determine what types of materials they handle so you can build your portfolio appropriately.

Companies with an in-house web design team manage most, if not all, aspects of their SEO. They have a complete web department that produces all sorts of materials for the company. The only downside is that the in-house group only produces materials for that one company. That’s generally not a problem because the types of materials produced are so various to promote the company and its products.

When searching for a position in the SEO industry, especially if you have little or no experience, you’ll have to rely on your SPEC SEOS to spotlight your ability to do the job. And while your talent may be great, don’t forget to show your enthusiasm. Enthusiasm can go a long way in this business.

For more on how we are doing this, check out The SMT’s “Portland Jewelry” and “Portland Jeweler” campaign, but don’t go blaming those San Diego Earthquakes on us!

According to Google, today’s hottest search was for When A Man Loves A Woman Lyrics, which is strange what with everything happening out in SE land today that could impact Website SEO (Search Engine Optimization) and Website Ranking, Portland. Not to mention Website Promotion for Oregon companies that operate sites or conduct ecommerce business with China.

Today Google ended talks with China over censorship of search results in that country, redirecting its China search engine (google.cn) visitors to the Hong Kong-based service (google.com.hk).

Should an American company compromise its principles to gain access to world’s fastest growing internet market? State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley is reported as saying, “Were I China, I would seriously consider the implications when one of the world’s most recognizable institutions has decided that it’s too difficult to do business in China.”

For local companies, this may well influence how we do business with clients from China, affecting our Portland Website SEO (Search Engine Optimization), Website Ranking and Website Promotion for Oregon on Baidu, China’s #1 Search Engine now that Google has exited the country.