Affiliate Making Money

I live in North Carolina. It’s a pretty state. You get a taste of the winter months but you don’t get a lot of winter weather per se. Sure the summers are hot but that’s what air conditioning is for. Overall, it’s a great place to live and raise a family.

That is except for the state government and their attempts to collect taxes on online purchases made from Amazon. They have already pushed Amazon far enough that the online retailing giant ended its affiliate programs with North Carolina residents in 2009 thus depriving residents of the chance to bring money into the state that would be spent in the state and would give some ailing jobless folks a chance at survival. Nice move!

Apparently, Big Brother is alive and well in the Tar Heel state as well since the state government has been trying to get detailed purchase information from Amazon which would include names and addresses of those making purchases from 2003 to 2010. Fortunately, a federal judge has called the state on its draconian efforts and handed them a major setback in federal court yesterday. cnet reports:

In a victory for the free speech and privacy rights of Amazon.com customers, a federal judge ruled today that the company would not have to turn over detailed records on nearly 50 million purchases to North Carolina tax collectors.

The state had demanded sensitive information including names and addresses of North Carolina customers–and information about exactly what they had purchased between 2003 and 2010.

U.S. District Judge Marsha Pechman in Washington state said that request went too far and “runs afoul of the First Amendment.” She granted Amazon summary judgment.

The Tar Heel State’s tax collectors have “no legitimate need” for details about the literary, music, and film habits of so many Amazon customers,” Pechman wrote. “In spite of this, (North Carolina) refuses to give up the detailed information about Amazon’s customers’ purchases, while at the same time requesting the identities of the customers and, arguably, detailed records of their purchases, including the expressive content.”

With privacy victories coming too few and far between these days at least we can feel like someone is paying attention and not letting the government run rough shod over privacy while squashing commerce in the process.

I suspect that the state feels they have good reasons for doing what they are doing. They will say that the taxes they want to collect will help the state. Pardon my cynicism, but if the affiliate money that was once coming onto the hands of the residents were turned back on that would REALLY help the state.

At the heart of this ruling though is privacy.

In addition, the ACLU intervened in the lawsuit asking for an even broader injunction against the tax collectors. They wanted Amazon to be prohibited from disclosing customer purchases without a subpoena, which the court did not grant.

In general, as Amazon stressed in its lawsuit, purchases of books, DVDs, Blu-Ray discs, and other media enjoy special privacy protections.

So what is the North Carolina government trying to do here? At the core, it’s trying to collect taxes from both Amazon and its citizens because of online purchases. In the process, it is killing an avenue for commerce in the state and appearing as if it wants more data on its residents in a time when that is not considered such a good thing. I don’t get it.

In the end the state is only hurting itself though because as people learn about these attempts they will maybe stop short of saying they will set up a business in the Tar Heel state for fear of too much government intrusion. Sadly, no one wins in that scenario.

What’s your take on the idea of taxing online purchases? It’s an old story but one that will likely get more attention in these days of scarce money. Have you been impacted by rulings like this in any other states? What’s worse, more taxes or invasion of privacy to collect them?

Social Media Monitoring in Just 60-Seconds. Guaranteed!

When Ping launched in early September, the music social network had one major problem: it wasn’t social. Sure, you can share stuff inside of iTunes, but there was no good way to post the songs you liked to the two big social networks: Facebook and Twitter. The truth is that Ping launched with Facebook Connect integration, but it was only for contact importing, and then Apple and Facebook had a bit of a dust up. Today, Apple is bringing Twitter integration to Ping.

As Twitter has just announced on their blog, by connecting iTunes to Twitter, you’ll be able to not only find your Twitter friends on Ping, but you’ll be able to tweet out Ping activity as well. That last bit is a key to making Ping actually work in a truly social way.

Perhaps even more interesting is that not only will each tweet contain a link back to the song or album on iTunes, but these links will work in New Twitter’s right-side pane. You’ll be able to listen to iTunes previews right from there — a huge feature that should lead to a lot of music buying, especially when the 90-second previews kick-in.

Facebook, meanwhile, is still MIA after they cut off Ping a day after launch. There’s talk the two side will hook up again, but so far it hasn’t happened yet. That said, there is a button in the drop down to manually post a song or album to Facebook, but it takes you to Facebook on the web to do it. The Twitter integration is fully baked-in.

This first big social integration follows Apple integrating Ping with users’ actual iTunes libraries, an important first step.

Twitter says this iTunes song previews feature will be available on twitter.com in the 23 countries where the iTunes Store offers music.

One big word of caution, when you first hook up your Twitter account to Ping, the default is to auto-tweet out all of your Ping activity — both when you post something and when you just “like” something. It alerts you to this at first and you can change it in your settings so that you can manually choose when to do it, just be warned that this happens.

I have to wonder if this deal is a money-making one for Twitter. Will they be getting affiliate fees for songs purchased thanks to Twitter links? I’ve asked Twitter that very question and will update when I hear back.

Update: Says Twitter on the affiliate fees:

We don’t comment on the underlying financials of our partnerships.

eric seiger

Scripting <b>News</b>: Earmarks, deficits, pfui!

Recent stories. Twitter links. My 40 most-recent Twitter links, ranked by number of clicks. My bike. People are always asking about my bike. A picture named bikesmall.jpg. Here's a picture. AFP news pic. Calendar ...

First Solar <b>News</b>, Rumors: CIGS, Mercury, Tellurium : Greentech Media

First the news... Apollo Solar Energy (OTC: ASOE), a vertically integrated miner, refiner and producer of high purity tellurium (Te), announced a five-year purchase contract between Apollo Solar Energy and a major worldwide solar panel ...

Ohio Sheriff: “Significant Evidence” « Liveshots

Knox County Sheriff David Barber says investigators.

eric seiger

I live in North Carolina. It’s a pretty state. You get a taste of the winter months but you don’t get a lot of winter weather per se. Sure the summers are hot but that’s what air conditioning is for. Overall, it’s a great place to live and raise a family.

That is except for the state government and their attempts to collect taxes on online purchases made from Amazon. They have already pushed Amazon far enough that the online retailing giant ended its affiliate programs with North Carolina residents in 2009 thus depriving residents of the chance to bring money into the state that would be spent in the state and would give some ailing jobless folks a chance at survival. Nice move!

Apparently, Big Brother is alive and well in the Tar Heel state as well since the state government has been trying to get detailed purchase information from Amazon which would include names and addresses of those making purchases from 2003 to 2010. Fortunately, a federal judge has called the state on its draconian efforts and handed them a major setback in federal court yesterday. cnet reports:

In a victory for the free speech and privacy rights of Amazon.com customers, a federal judge ruled today that the company would not have to turn over detailed records on nearly 50 million purchases to North Carolina tax collectors.

The state had demanded sensitive information including names and addresses of North Carolina customers–and information about exactly what they had purchased between 2003 and 2010.

U.S. District Judge Marsha Pechman in Washington state said that request went too far and “runs afoul of the First Amendment.” She granted Amazon summary judgment.

The Tar Heel State’s tax collectors have “no legitimate need” for details about the literary, music, and film habits of so many Amazon customers,” Pechman wrote. “In spite of this, (North Carolina) refuses to give up the detailed information about Amazon’s customers’ purchases, while at the same time requesting the identities of the customers and, arguably, detailed records of their purchases, including the expressive content.”

With privacy victories coming too few and far between these days at least we can feel like someone is paying attention and not letting the government run rough shod over privacy while squashing commerce in the process.

I suspect that the state feels they have good reasons for doing what they are doing. They will say that the taxes they want to collect will help the state. Pardon my cynicism, but if the affiliate money that was once coming onto the hands of the residents were turned back on that would REALLY help the state.

At the heart of this ruling though is privacy.

In addition, the ACLU intervened in the lawsuit asking for an even broader injunction against the tax collectors. They wanted Amazon to be prohibited from disclosing customer purchases without a subpoena, which the court did not grant.

In general, as Amazon stressed in its lawsuit, purchases of books, DVDs, Blu-Ray discs, and other media enjoy special privacy protections.

So what is the North Carolina government trying to do here? At the core, it’s trying to collect taxes from both Amazon and its citizens because of online purchases. In the process, it is killing an avenue for commerce in the state and appearing as if it wants more data on its residents in a time when that is not considered such a good thing. I don’t get it.

In the end the state is only hurting itself though because as people learn about these attempts they will maybe stop short of saying they will set up a business in the Tar Heel state for fear of too much government intrusion. Sadly, no one wins in that scenario.

What’s your take on the idea of taxing online purchases? It’s an old story but one that will likely get more attention in these days of scarce money. Have you been impacted by rulings like this in any other states? What’s worse, more taxes or invasion of privacy to collect them?

Social Media Monitoring in Just 60-Seconds. Guaranteed!

When Ping launched in early September, the music social network had one major problem: it wasn’t social. Sure, you can share stuff inside of iTunes, but there was no good way to post the songs you liked to the two big social networks: Facebook and Twitter. The truth is that Ping launched with Facebook Connect integration, but it was only for contact importing, and then Apple and Facebook had a bit of a dust up. Today, Apple is bringing Twitter integration to Ping.

As Twitter has just announced on their blog, by connecting iTunes to Twitter, you’ll be able to not only find your Twitter friends on Ping, but you’ll be able to tweet out Ping activity as well. That last bit is a key to making Ping actually work in a truly social way.

Perhaps even more interesting is that not only will each tweet contain a link back to the song or album on iTunes, but these links will work in New Twitter’s right-side pane. You’ll be able to listen to iTunes previews right from there — a huge feature that should lead to a lot of music buying, especially when the 90-second previews kick-in.

Facebook, meanwhile, is still MIA after they cut off Ping a day after launch. There’s talk the two side will hook up again, but so far it hasn’t happened yet. That said, there is a button in the drop down to manually post a song or album to Facebook, but it takes you to Facebook on the web to do it. The Twitter integration is fully baked-in.

This first big social integration follows Apple integrating Ping with users’ actual iTunes libraries, an important first step.

Twitter says this iTunes song previews feature will be available on twitter.com in the 23 countries where the iTunes Store offers music.

One big word of caution, when you first hook up your Twitter account to Ping, the default is to auto-tweet out all of your Ping activity — both when you post something and when you just “like” something. It alerts you to this at first and you can change it in your settings so that you can manually choose when to do it, just be warned that this happens.

I have to wonder if this deal is a money-making one for Twitter. Will they be getting affiliate fees for songs purchased thanks to Twitter links? I’ve asked Twitter that very question and will update when I hear back.

Update: Says Twitter on the affiliate fees:

We don’t comment on the underlying financials of our partnerships.

eric seiger

Scripting <b>News</b>: Earmarks, deficits, pfui!

Recent stories. Twitter links. My 40 most-recent Twitter links, ranked by number of clicks. My bike. People are always asking about my bike. A picture named bikesmall.jpg. Here's a picture. AFP news pic. Calendar ...

First Solar <b>News</b>, Rumors: CIGS, Mercury, Tellurium : Greentech Media

First the news... Apollo Solar Energy (OTC: ASOE), a vertically integrated miner, refiner and producer of high purity tellurium (Te), announced a five-year purchase contract between Apollo Solar Energy and a major worldwide solar panel ...

Ohio Sheriff: “Significant Evidence” « Liveshots

Knox County Sheriff David Barber says investigators.

eric seiger

eric seiger

eric seiger

Scripting <b>News</b>: Earmarks, deficits, pfui!

Recent stories. Twitter links. My 40 most-recent Twitter links, ranked by number of clicks. My bike. People are always asking about my bike. A picture named bikesmall.jpg. Here's a picture. AFP news pic. Calendar ...

First Solar <b>News</b>, Rumors: CIGS, Mercury, Tellurium : Greentech Media

First the news... Apollo Solar Energy (OTC: ASOE), a vertically integrated miner, refiner and producer of high purity tellurium (Te), announced a five-year purchase contract between Apollo Solar Energy and a major worldwide solar panel ...

Ohio Sheriff: “Significant Evidence” « Liveshots

Knox County Sheriff David Barber says investigators.

eric seiger

I live in North Carolina. It’s a pretty state. You get a taste of the winter months but you don’t get a lot of winter weather per se. Sure the summers are hot but that’s what air conditioning is for. Overall, it’s a great place to live and raise a family.

That is except for the state government and their attempts to collect taxes on online purchases made from Amazon. They have already pushed Amazon far enough that the online retailing giant ended its affiliate programs with North Carolina residents in 2009 thus depriving residents of the chance to bring money into the state that would be spent in the state and would give some ailing jobless folks a chance at survival. Nice move!

Apparently, Big Brother is alive and well in the Tar Heel state as well since the state government has been trying to get detailed purchase information from Amazon which would include names and addresses of those making purchases from 2003 to 2010. Fortunately, a federal judge has called the state on its draconian efforts and handed them a major setback in federal court yesterday. cnet reports:

In a victory for the free speech and privacy rights of Amazon.com customers, a federal judge ruled today that the company would not have to turn over detailed records on nearly 50 million purchases to North Carolina tax collectors.

The state had demanded sensitive information including names and addresses of North Carolina customers–and information about exactly what they had purchased between 2003 and 2010.

U.S. District Judge Marsha Pechman in Washington state said that request went too far and “runs afoul of the First Amendment.” She granted Amazon summary judgment.

The Tar Heel State’s tax collectors have “no legitimate need” for details about the literary, music, and film habits of so many Amazon customers,” Pechman wrote. “In spite of this, (North Carolina) refuses to give up the detailed information about Amazon’s customers’ purchases, while at the same time requesting the identities of the customers and, arguably, detailed records of their purchases, including the expressive content.”

With privacy victories coming too few and far between these days at least we can feel like someone is paying attention and not letting the government run rough shod over privacy while squashing commerce in the process.

I suspect that the state feels they have good reasons for doing what they are doing. They will say that the taxes they want to collect will help the state. Pardon my cynicism, but if the affiliate money that was once coming onto the hands of the residents were turned back on that would REALLY help the state.

At the heart of this ruling though is privacy.

In addition, the ACLU intervened in the lawsuit asking for an even broader injunction against the tax collectors. They wanted Amazon to be prohibited from disclosing customer purchases without a subpoena, which the court did not grant.

In general, as Amazon stressed in its lawsuit, purchases of books, DVDs, Blu-Ray discs, and other media enjoy special privacy protections.

So what is the North Carolina government trying to do here? At the core, it’s trying to collect taxes from both Amazon and its citizens because of online purchases. In the process, it is killing an avenue for commerce in the state and appearing as if it wants more data on its residents in a time when that is not considered such a good thing. I don’t get it.

In the end the state is only hurting itself though because as people learn about these attempts they will maybe stop short of saying they will set up a business in the Tar Heel state for fear of too much government intrusion. Sadly, no one wins in that scenario.

What’s your take on the idea of taxing online purchases? It’s an old story but one that will likely get more attention in these days of scarce money. Have you been impacted by rulings like this in any other states? What’s worse, more taxes or invasion of privacy to collect them?

Social Media Monitoring in Just 60-Seconds. Guaranteed!

When Ping launched in early September, the music social network had one major problem: it wasn’t social. Sure, you can share stuff inside of iTunes, but there was no good way to post the songs you liked to the two big social networks: Facebook and Twitter. The truth is that Ping launched with Facebook Connect integration, but it was only for contact importing, and then Apple and Facebook had a bit of a dust up. Today, Apple is bringing Twitter integration to Ping.

As Twitter has just announced on their blog, by connecting iTunes to Twitter, you’ll be able to not only find your Twitter friends on Ping, but you’ll be able to tweet out Ping activity as well. That last bit is a key to making Ping actually work in a truly social way.

Perhaps even more interesting is that not only will each tweet contain a link back to the song or album on iTunes, but these links will work in New Twitter’s right-side pane. You’ll be able to listen to iTunes previews right from there — a huge feature that should lead to a lot of music buying, especially when the 90-second previews kick-in.

Facebook, meanwhile, is still MIA after they cut off Ping a day after launch. There’s talk the two side will hook up again, but so far it hasn’t happened yet. That said, there is a button in the drop down to manually post a song or album to Facebook, but it takes you to Facebook on the web to do it. The Twitter integration is fully baked-in.

This first big social integration follows Apple integrating Ping with users’ actual iTunes libraries, an important first step.

Twitter says this iTunes song previews feature will be available on twitter.com in the 23 countries where the iTunes Store offers music.

One big word of caution, when you first hook up your Twitter account to Ping, the default is to auto-tweet out all of your Ping activity — both when you post something and when you just “like” something. It alerts you to this at first and you can change it in your settings so that you can manually choose when to do it, just be warned that this happens.

I have to wonder if this deal is a money-making one for Twitter. Will they be getting affiliate fees for songs purchased thanks to Twitter links? I’ve asked Twitter that very question and will update when I hear back.

Update: Says Twitter on the affiliate fees:

We don’t comment on the underlying financials of our partnerships.

eric seiger

eric seiger

Scripting <b>News</b>: Earmarks, deficits, pfui!

Recent stories. Twitter links. My 40 most-recent Twitter links, ranked by number of clicks. My bike. People are always asking about my bike. A picture named bikesmall.jpg. Here's a picture. AFP news pic. Calendar ...

First Solar <b>News</b>, Rumors: CIGS, Mercury, Tellurium : Greentech Media

First the news... Apollo Solar Energy (OTC: ASOE), a vertically integrated miner, refiner and producer of high purity tellurium (Te), announced a five-year purchase contract between Apollo Solar Energy and a major worldwide solar panel ...

Ohio Sheriff: “Significant Evidence” « Liveshots

Knox County Sheriff David Barber says investigators.

eric seiger

eric seiger

Scripting <b>News</b>: Earmarks, deficits, pfui!

Recent stories. Twitter links. My 40 most-recent Twitter links, ranked by number of clicks. My bike. People are always asking about my bike. A picture named bikesmall.jpg. Here's a picture. AFP news pic. Calendar ...

First Solar <b>News</b>, Rumors: CIGS, Mercury, Tellurium : Greentech Media

First the news... Apollo Solar Energy (OTC: ASOE), a vertically integrated miner, refiner and producer of high purity tellurium (Te), announced a five-year purchase contract between Apollo Solar Energy and a major worldwide solar panel ...

Ohio Sheriff: “Significant Evidence” « Liveshots

Knox County Sheriff David Barber says investigators.

eric seiger

Scripting <b>News</b>: Earmarks, deficits, pfui!

Recent stories. Twitter links. My 40 most-recent Twitter links, ranked by number of clicks. My bike. People are always asking about my bike. A picture named bikesmall.jpg. Here's a picture. AFP news pic. Calendar ...

First Solar <b>News</b>, Rumors: CIGS, Mercury, Tellurium : Greentech Media

First the news... Apollo Solar Energy (OTC: ASOE), a vertically integrated miner, refiner and producer of high purity tellurium (Te), announced a five-year purchase contract between Apollo Solar Energy and a major worldwide solar panel ...

Ohio Sheriff: “Significant Evidence” « Liveshots

Knox County Sheriff David Barber says investigators.

eric seiger

Scripting <b>News</b>: Earmarks, deficits, pfui!

Recent stories. Twitter links. My 40 most-recent Twitter links, ranked by number of clicks. My bike. People are always asking about my bike. A picture named bikesmall.jpg. Here's a picture. AFP news pic. Calendar ...

First Solar <b>News</b>, Rumors: CIGS, Mercury, Tellurium : Greentech Media

First the news... Apollo Solar Energy (OTC: ASOE), a vertically integrated miner, refiner and producer of high purity tellurium (Te), announced a five-year purchase contract between Apollo Solar Energy and a major worldwide solar panel ...

Ohio Sheriff: “Significant Evidence” « Liveshots

Knox County Sheriff David Barber says investigators.

eric seiger eric seiger
eric seiger

eric seiger
eric seiger

Scripting <b>News</b>: Earmarks, deficits, pfui!

Recent stories. Twitter links. My 40 most-recent Twitter links, ranked by number of clicks. My bike. People are always asking about my bike. A picture named bikesmall.jpg. Here's a picture. AFP news pic. Calendar ...

First Solar <b>News</b>, Rumors: CIGS, Mercury, Tellurium : Greentech Media

First the news... Apollo Solar Energy (OTC: ASOE), a vertically integrated miner, refiner and producer of high purity tellurium (Te), announced a five-year purchase contract between Apollo Solar Energy and a major worldwide solar panel ...

Ohio Sheriff: “Significant Evidence” « Liveshots

Knox County Sheriff David Barber says investigators.

eric seiger

Scripting <b>News</b>: Earmarks, deficits, pfui!

Recent stories. Twitter links. My 40 most-recent Twitter links, ranked by number of clicks. My bike. People are always asking about my bike. A picture named bikesmall.jpg. Here's a picture. AFP news pic. Calendar ...

First Solar <b>News</b>, Rumors: CIGS, Mercury, Tellurium : Greentech Media

First the news... Apollo Solar Energy (OTC: ASOE), a vertically integrated miner, refiner and producer of high purity tellurium (Te), announced a five-year purchase contract between Apollo Solar Energy and a major worldwide solar panel ...

Ohio Sheriff: “Significant Evidence” « Liveshots

Knox County Sheriff David Barber says investigators.

eric seiger

Scripting <b>News</b>: Earmarks, deficits, pfui!

Recent stories. Twitter links. My 40 most-recent Twitter links, ranked by number of clicks. My bike. People are always asking about my bike. A picture named bikesmall.jpg. Here's a picture. AFP news pic. Calendar ...

First Solar <b>News</b>, Rumors: CIGS, Mercury, Tellurium : Greentech Media

First the news... Apollo Solar Energy (OTC: ASOE), a vertically integrated miner, refiner and producer of high purity tellurium (Te), announced a five-year purchase contract between Apollo Solar Energy and a major worldwide solar panel ...

Ohio Sheriff: “Significant Evidence” « Liveshots

Knox County Sheriff David Barber says investigators.