D.Murali

Chennai: With popular cricketers going under the hammer on February 20, a major worry for the successful bidders will be the piggy-backers, the advertisers who would wriggle in to ‘associate themselves with, and therefore capitalise on, a particular event without paying any sponsorship fee.’ This is the netherworld strategy Arul George Scaria discusses in ‘Ambush Marketing: Game within a game’ (www.oup.com).

One of the most common methods adopted by ambush marketers is registering domain names containing the event title or names having reference to the events, explains Scaria. “Even though we can see successful examples of tackling domain name related issues, the increasing number of websites and web pages makes the issue a really complicated one.”

Another subject discussed in the book is the unauthorised use of information available on the Internet. “Most of the event organisers produce publications for providing information to the public about the event and when someone reproduces it, it needs to be ensured that it is done only with the permission of the event organiser.” It is not unusual for ambushers to project the snatched information ‘in quite ingenious ways’ to create ‘an impression that they are associated with the event.’

A more serious problem is ‘framing’ – a method whereby ambush marketers pass off websites and the contents as their own; they may design ‘the links to the official website in such a way as to make a browser believe that the website is endorsed by the official sponsors.’

Use of meta tags without the permission from event organisers is yet another form of deceit. These tags are embedded in a website’s html code for enabling search engines like Google to identify the contents of a site. When, for instance, a person searches the term ‘world cup’ in a search engine, it looks for sites with the meta tag ‘world cup’ for producing the search result.

“The greater the number of meta tags, the higher will be the order of ranking in the result page. When an ambush marketer creates a web page having the meta tag ‘world cup’ repeated many times in its html code, it may be shown even above the official website of ‘world cup’ in the search result page.” Ambush marketers may also show their presence through pop-ups and banner ads, watch out, Scaria adds.

One of the unreported Indian cases which discussed the issues relating to unauthorised use of meta tags is the decision of the Delhi High Court in Tata Sons Ltd. vs Bodacious Tatas in the year 1999, the book mentions.

Counsel on creepy traps lying in wait.

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Menacing monitoring

There is so much information available on the Internet that it makes monitoring the activities of other people easy, notes W. James Potter in ‘Media Literacy,’ fourth edition (www.sagepublications.com). And he gives a few frightening examples of monitoring.

Such as, “many women Google prospective dates, neighbours check what the house next door sold for on Zillow.com, people use online satellite technology to peek into people’s backyards, and prospective employers check out applicants by accessing their websites, even gaining access to persona information on social networking websites such as MySpace or pictures to sites such as Flickr.”

All this, apart from commercial monitoring done by credit card companies, Internet service providers, search engines and so on. “More than 75 per cent of employers monitor how their employees use their computers on the job, checking websites and e-mail, and also monitor phone calls – numbers and time spent.”

What makes monitoring possible is the ‘cookie,’ which Netscape created in 1994, “as a special browser feature to make life easier for people browsing the Web,” traces Potter. “Netscape thought cookies would be especially useful in enabling ‘shopping cart’ services on websites, such as Amazon.com. The idea was to allow consumers to click from page to page, choosing items to buy, while a virtual clerk kept track of the items by listing them in a small file called a cookie.”

To consumers, cookies offered the comfort of not having to re-type addresses and other particulars on a subsequent visit to the virtual store. A miracle of sorts, it seemed, because when Netscape first developed cookies, it did not tell consumers how the cookies worked.

It was in January 1996 that the media reported the cookie technology; “a firestorm of criticism erupted when people began realising how their privacy was being invaded with out their knowledge. Officials at Netscape were surprised by the criticism and dismissed it.”

Defying Netscape’s fond wish, the matter didn’t blow over. So, in a subsequent version of the browsing software, Netscape had to add a tool to disable cookies…

Essential guide to ‘literacy’.

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Deep meditation

Daniel Lyons, the ‘fake Steve Jobs’ presents ‘the secret life’ of the Apple icon in ‘Options’ (www.landmarkonthenet.com). In part one of the parody, titled ‘trouble in Jobs land,’ the Jobs you meet is “barefoot, sitting on a cushion in the lotus position, gazing at a circuit board.” A board, no bigger than a playing card, that took years to create, he narrates. “It is the heart of the iPhone, the most important object my engineers have ever assembled…”

The Tassajara room, where the meditation is on, is ‘windowless, white, perfectly silent,’ but the stillness is abruptly disturbed by knocks on the door. Bad news! The SEC is getting into the depths of backdated stock options…

“Every day I come to work and try to create something magical, and instead I spend all my time putting out fires and fighting … emergencies and distractions, with a million people trying to get in to see me, or hounding me on the phone, and a zillion emails piling up in my inbox. Greenpeace is hounding me because our computers don’t turn themselves into compost when you’re done with them… Microsoft, the scourge of the planet, has been chasing me for thirty years, copying everything I do…”

Fun read, if your karma has place for it!

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Tailpiece

“It always happens only to me that my mails never reach the addressee!”

“Some connection problem, probably?”

“No, I guess it is because the missing @ symbol in my keyboard!”

**

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