Sawickipedia

Where do laws come from? (The Utah Story)

Thanks for John Battelle and Eric Goldman for pointing out Utah’s rediculous attempt to save businesses from the vagueries of competition.   In a prior role, I had the good fortune to meet and get to know Eric.  Eric’s a really smart legal professor who has to be one of the leading legal experts with regards to online advertising law, regulation and legal theory.  So I tend to agree with Eric’s reasoning on issues like Utah banning Keyword (”KW”) advertising.  Let’s see, let’s ban the holy grail of online advertising, hmmm, yeah that’s a good idea.  If I were a SEM firm in Salt Lake, then I might think about relocating to friendlier climes lest you be labeled an outlaw or worse a criminal enterprise. 

Having worked in the online and keyword based advertising for a number of years, this issue has its roots a long way back.  From stories that I have been told, this dates back to what can only be best described as a holy war between Whenu  and 1-800-Contacts.  The story goes like this (and having told it to be people familiar with the Utah lobbying scene and online internet advertising law-making no one has ever thought it to be untrue so I tend to believe their must be a seed of truth to the story).  1-800-contacts sued Whenu for KW targeting ads against 1-800-contacts web site.  Unable to win in court, 1-800-contacts, a Utah based company, pleaded its case to the Utah legislature with a large amount (all legal) of donations to the Utah legislature.  This lagresse resulted in an anti-Whenu bill effectively banning Whenu’s targeted ads being shown to Utah users.  Unfortunately based on the dollars and sob story of how 1-800-contacts business was being ruined by Whenu, they also got Utah to ban KW based targeted ads in the same bill (collateral damage).  Fortunately, 1-800-contacts ability to buy legislation has its limits as the bill was ultimately overturned in federal courts.

And not having learned it’s lesson the first time,  Utah is back again trying to save the world from KW advertising with a its most recent legislative volley.  It will be interesting to see when Utah’s legislature finally wakes up from the trance of its business backers to realize the folly they have been lead on.  If Utah was being considered for a Google server-plex anytime soon, I have to imagine this killed any of those thoughts.

Update: ClickZ does a little investigation into the motives of this law and seems to corroborate my story about Whenu and 1-800-contacts.  Amazing how easy it is to buy a law if you were to believe the story.