Loading ...As we delve into our legal series, the first case we look at involves the Federal Trade Commission, Impulse Media Group, and affiliates. As many people know and have witnessed first hand, affiliates and the legalities surrounding them can be a delicate issue. In this video, attorneys Sarah Bird and Clarke Walton discuss the case, the outcome, what the companies involved did right, and what they did wrong.
Just for a quick recap, Impulse Media Group is an adult website that has several affiliates. The FTC sued Impulse Media Group for spam that was sent via its affiliates. The case went to jury and found that Impulse Media should not be held liable.
Many people disagreed with the outcome including Affiliate Summit Co-founder Shawn Collins who referred to it as a “travesty.” From a legal perspective however, attorney Anne Mitchell blatantly says, “the FTC couldn’t prove their case.” Clarke Walton also agrees with the verdict on the grounds that Impulse Media had well-designed policy agreements with its affiliates.
Affiliate agreements are very important because they essentially set the bar for how the relationship is governed. Clarke points out that the relationship between Impulse Media Group and its affiliates was that of an independent contractor and not of an agency-principal.
Sarah Bird also throws out a word of advice for affiliate marketers. She says monitoring your affiliates in addition to the terms of use set up, is a good rule of thumb to go by to prevent unwanted activity.
As an expert witness and mlm consultant in the mlm network marketing industry, typically regulators will not just look at a firm’s networker agreement and policies and procedures. They will examine how well the firm enforces them. Lax enforcement leaves a firm vulnerable to legal challenges. (I am not an attorney and am providing info not legal advice.)
Essays like this are so imoptrant to broadening people’s horizons.
Thank you this is very great information to know!
lilypad~
good luck with the plan
Good post. As always you give a refreshing view on the subject, I always make a point of checking this blog and your feed.
Interesting article, i will come back to your blog soon, best regards
Your blog is very interresting for me, i will come back here..
It turns out that using blogs on the part of the promotional activities violates Google’s search guidelines, so we have ended the promotion. We would like to apologize to the people concerned and to our users, and are making an effort to make our communications more transparent in order to prevent the recurrence of such an incident.”