Category: Business Ethics

By Posted on Posted in Business Ethics, Transparency vs. Secrecy, Web 2.0/Social Media Tagged with ,

Facebook’s recently adopted Terms of Use are attracting harsh attention in the online world.

Ownership; Proprietary Rights

Except for User Content and Applications/Connect Sites, all materials, content and trademarks on the Facebook Service are the property of Facebook and/or its licensors and are protected by all relevant IP laws and other proprietary rights

OK, no problem so far; user content remains the property of those posting it, and Facebook quite correctly maintains its rights to its own intellectual property. But then a little later, the kicker. An apparent transfer of rights to Facebook, to use your content any way it wants, with no compensation to you.

Licenses

You hereby grant Facebook an irrevocable, perpetual, non-exclusive, transferable, fully paid, worldwide license (with the right to sublicense) to (a) use, copy, publish, stream, store, retain, publicly perform or display, transmit, scan, reformat, modify, edit, frame, translate, excerpt, adapt, create derivative works and distribute (through multiple tiers), any User Content you (i) Post on or in connection with the Facebook Service or the promotion thereof subject only to your privacy settings or (ii) enable a user to Post, including by offering a Share Link on your website and (b) to use your name, likeness and image for any purpose, including commercial or advertising, each of (a) and (b) on or in connection with the Facebook Service or the promotion thereof. You represent and warrant that you have all rights and permissions to grant the foregoing licenses.
(snip)
Submissions

You acknowledge and agree that any questions, comments, suggestions, ideas, feedback or other information that you provide to Facebook (“Submissions”), are non-confidential and non-proprietary. Facebook will be entitled to the unrestricted use of any such Submission for any purpose, commercial or otherwise, without acknowledgment or compensation to you.

Say, what? By my reading, this not only gives Facebook the right to sell our content without even telling us, let alone cutting us in on the revenues, but also could be interpreted–it’s a stretch, but lawyers exist as an industry because of these sorts of stretches–as allowing the company the right to use any content that includes a please-link-back utility that includes Facebook.

Writing in The Consumerist, Chris Walters says this means “anything you upload to Facebook can be used by Facebook in any way they deem fit, forever, no matter what you do later.”

As Amazon, Google, and other content platforms have claimed in the past, Facebook responds that it’s just claiming the rights necessary to operate the service:

We are not claiming and have never claimed ownership of material that users upload. The new Terms were clarified to be more consistent with the behavior of the site. That is, if you send a message to another user (or post to their wall, etc…), that content might not be removed by Facebook if you delete your account (but can be deleted by your friend).

Quoted in the Chicago Tribune, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg put it this way:

We wouldn’t share your information in a way you wouldn’t want,” Zuckerberg said. “The trust you place in us as a safe place to share information is the most important part of what makes Facebook work.

Still, like those other platforms, this response seems thin and inadequate. Surely a lawyer could easily create language that fully protects Facebook while at the same time making it completely unambiguous that user-posted content belongs to its creators, who are merely providing Facebook the right to display and link to it. Without sublicensing, monetary or other compensation, or other seizure of rights the company doesn’t need.

Meanwhile, I’m not a lawyer (and this is not legal advice), but here’s my gift to the Internet community. I freely grant anyone the right to use or modify the following paragraph (which will be posted to Facebook, since my blog automatically feeds into Facebook notes):

I hereby note that I was not presented with the option to sign or decline Facebook’s February 4, 2009 Terms of Use revision, and that while I allow Facebook to display my content on any page where I post it or on any page where another Facebook user links to it, I do not transfer ownership of my intellectual property, nor do I agree to allow Facebook to relicense or reprint my content outside these uses without my approval. I am willing to negotiate licensing and revenue-sharing agreements with Facebook, but I explicitly do not grant blanket permission.

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By Posted on Posted in Business Ethics, Frugality/Frugal Fun, Social and Economic Justice

Some random thoughts about the economy and ethics today.

1. President Obama took a small but welcome step toward curtailing corporate abuses yesterday, restricting CEO pay for those companies taking government bailouts to a “measly” half a million dollars. Tom Peters, author of In Search of Excellence, endorsed the idea but said it didn’t go far enough, noting that the myth of the irreplaceable CEO was just that, a myth. He’d like to max out CEO pay at the same level a top general or admiral receives. Not a bad idea!

2. For those CEOs who can’t imagine living on that amount, I assure you that it’s possible to live comfortably, even luxuriously, on far less. I remember when $10,000 per year felt like an enormous sum of money to me. I actually had a job in New York City as recently as 1980 that paid $82 per week of hard work–that was part of the “research phase” for my e-book on having fun cheaply, The Penny-Pinching Hedonist: How to Live Like Royalty with a Peasant’s Pocketbook. In fact, if you’re a CEO who finds this new “limited” income a hardship, contact me. I’ll give you a free copy of the e-book, and the $8.50 you save will be your first step toward frugality. ;-). It’ll save the typical reader between $500-$2000 per year. In your case, it might save you a million or so.

3. Talk about sleeping at the switch! Whistleblower Harry Markopolos not only claims (and, I understand, documented during his recent testimony) that he gave the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) enough info to break up Bernie Madoff’s Ponzi scheme as far back as 2000, but also laid it out for a Wall Street Journal reporter who was interested, but couldn’t get the go-ahead from brass, back in 2005. Markopolos had some pretty harsh words for the SEC:

I gift wrapped and delivered the largest Ponzi scheme in history to them and some how they couldn’t be bothered to conduct a thorough and proper investigation because they were too busy on matters of higher priority.

4. The left-of-center political action group MoveOn is jumping into the fray with a petition opposing the use of bailout dollars for executive bonuses. This is from the message you can send to friends after signing, which you can do at https://pol.moveon.org/bonus/?r_by=15503-5426570-ynLMRyx&rc=comment_paste:

Did you hear that Wall Street gave out $18.4 billion in bonuses in 2008? $18.4 billion to the people who crippled our economy with their recklessness and greed and then took $700 billion of our money. Outrageous, right?

Not only did I sign, but I feel any company that took our tax money and then paid even a dollar in bonuses should be made to pay it back. Just because the Bush administration was too incompetent to specify how this money was spent does not mean we have to tolerate this outrage. And forgive me for being out of touch, but I always thought bonuses were something you earn through stellar performance–not for running your company, and the economy, into the ground.

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By Posted on Posted in Business Ethics, Web 2.0/Social Media

Apparently, paying $2,715 a month rent for a two-bedroom apartment doesn’t even come with the slightest bitching privileges.

That’s what Katy and David Griffiths paid to live in a luxury apartment owned by Rockrose Development Corporation. But they were asked to leave, the lease not renewed–apparently because they tried to ask some pretty basic questions in a public forum, like why they were being assessed $600 per year to pay for a gym that wasn’t yet open. When David Griffiths’ post on that topic was refused by the building’s Internet forum administrator, he started a Google group for tenants; he suspects the company was monitoring.

The company claims he was one of only about 10 problem tenants out of 6000 units it controls around the city–but the action created a climate of fear. One tenant is quoted as saying,

Another tenant has circulated a petition asking Rockrose to keep the gym open later. It closes at 10 p.m., too early for some tenants, who pay a mandatory $600 annual amenities fee.

But she is unsure whether to deliver the petition. “I’m scared,” she said. “What if I need to renew?”

Ironically, the building was supposedly set up to encourage community. But this heavy-handed action makes you wonder.

Hmmm, almost sounds like Facebook.

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By Posted on Posted in Abundance and Prosperity, Business Ethics

After the Madoff scandal, the collapse of the stock market, and all the rest, we need recession-busters and we need a business culture of ethics and sustainability. Here are three simple steps that could make it happen:

1. Sign the Business Ethics Pledge–demonstrate your understanding that ethical businesses work better, and your commitment (which your customers will love) to conduct your business ethically.
2. Tell at least 100 others (you’ll get a resource guide offering a dozen easy ways to do this, once you sign). better yet, tell a few thousand.
3. Take advantage of the option you have as a Pledge signer to get my award-winning sixth book, Principled Profit: Marketing That Puts People First, at a very deep discount ($9.95 instead of $17.50).
4. Read a chapter a week and put at least one idea into practice.

By around May, you’ll have finished the book–and chances are good that your business will be thriving as you implement these life-changing strategies and demonstrate to the world–and your own financial team–that these ways actually work.

Why not give it a try?

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By Posted on Posted in Business Ethics, Marketing Techniques and Philosophies Tagged with , , ,

OK, here comes a rant; I’m in an Andy Rooney mood, only more snarky. But it’s short. You’ve been warned.

Whose bright idea was this inane bit of “viral marketing?” I opened up one too many e-mails from Internet marketing gurus this week where the headline promises a gift, and the “gift” is a bleeping half-off offer.

Dude, if I have to pay for it, it isn’t a gift. It’s a sale. And if it’s a sale, don’t call it a gift–or you wont get the sale from me. Not only that, you’ve just drastically reduced the chances of my ever doing business with you again, because I value business honesty so much that I wrote an award-winning book about it.

Want to make money with a holiday gift offer? Don’t pull this crap. Instead, follow the model of Publicity Hound Joan Stewart. She compiles her annual “best of” e-book, filled with useful, actionable advice, loads every page with a good tip and a bounce-back order to a highly relevant product you can buy, and gives it away for free. And tells all her readers they can give it away, too. It’s the same formula that grew her free weekly newsletter into a six-figure business.

Okay, rant over. Putting on big smile to wish you a very happy holiday and an ethical, profitable 2009 🙂

And call a spade a spade, a ale a sale, and a gift a gift.

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By Posted on Posted in Business Ethics, Ethics in Government, People Helping People, Politics

Calling it the worst fraud in history (far worse than Enron), Democracy Now released the shocking news that the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) had known there were serious problems around Bernard Madoff for nine years!

Are you as sick and tired of this as I am? Enron fell apart in 2001. Michael Milken was indicted in 1989–that’s almost 20 years ago! And now we find out that Madoff, former head of NASDAQ, took the whole financial system for an astonishing $50 billion, suckering investors in with the promise of outrageously good yields and wiping out numerous good charities–the same week we find out Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich actually had the chutzpah to try to sell Obama’s vacant Senate seat.

Have we learned NOTHING since the Milken days?

If you’re all riled up about business scandals, about banks and industrialists coming to Washington to coax billions of our tax dollars out of the government while doing nothing either to change the over-lavish lifestyles or to pump credit back into the system, if you think these companies should get a clue before they come looking for a handout and the government should get a clue before it hands out our money without any oversight, if you’re sick and tired of being sick and tired–there are a few things you can do. They’re easy, they take almost no time, and they could make a difference.

First, tell Obama’s transition team what you want to see the next administration accomplish. It’s the first time I can remember a newly elected president making a conscious and thorough effort to tap the wisdom of the general public.

Second, sign the Business Ethics Pledge and help create a climate where the Milkens, Madoffs, Kenneth Lays, and Blagojeviches of the future won’t find anyone to listen to their crooked Ponzi schemes and extortionate rackets.

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By Posted on Posted in Business Ethics, Ethics in Government

Four years after launching the Business Ethics Pledge campaign, and five years after publishing my book, Principled Profit: Marketing That Puts People First, that shows that ethical businesses can more easily succeed, the goal of making future Enron scandals unthinkable seems very distant this week. One dismal news story after another!

A little sampling of the depressing headlines:

Democratic Governor Rod R. Blagojevich of Illinois, arrested on corruption charges, manages to paint himself as more venal and small-minded, and more focused on personal gain, than even Richard Nixon. Read more »

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By Posted on Posted in Business Ethics, Energy & Sustainability, Ethics-International, Social and Economic Justice

The company that so many of us love to hate has started addressing some of the reasons why I won’t do business with them. This short article by Mallen Baker shows progress on both labor standards and energy. Reprinted in full with Mallen’s generous permission.

This is big news, as my understanding is a major part of why so much of the US economy picked up and moved to Asia is Wal-Mart’s constant demand that suppliers reduce the price 10% every year. About time it started adding some social responsibility to its demands.

Wal-Mart has told a meeting of its Chinese suppliers that social and environmental standards will need to be raised to help the company meet its goals and to move forward in the wake of the milk poisoning scandal that has left many Chinese children still in hospital.

The company’s requirements will aim to improve energy efficiency, with a 20 percent improvement in energy efficiency required of the top 200 suppliers, full disclosure of locations of factories including sub-contractors, and product improvements in terms of energy ratings.

Wal-Mart said that many of the measures would be good for suppliers, helping them to save money by reducing waste. But in any case, it made a direct link between the quality of products and whether or not a supplier cheated on overtime or used child labour, or dumped polluting waste.

In return, the company has said it will change the nature of its relationship with Asian suppliers, aiming to develop deeper long-term relationships to mutual benefit, rather than focusing simply on the price of each transaction.

Overall, I continue to be highly critical of Wal-Mart, but glad to see the company moving forward. I think this is only the third time I had anything good to say about Wal-Mart in this space. The first was after Katrina, when the company stepped in to do what the federal government should have done. And the second was almost two years ago, regarding one of the company’s other energy saving initiatives.

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By Posted on Posted in Business Ethics, Social and Economic Justice

Am I the only one outraged by this total misuse of taxpayer dollars? The companies that just got that $700 billion bailout are supposed to use this money to revitalize the stagnant loan market and kickstart the economy. Hello! This is OUR money you’re squandering!

  • Shareholders are lining up at the trough to capture dividends–and AIG doesn’t even know how it blew through its tax-funded payday. How can these companies take taxpayer money, claim it’s an emergency, and then pay dividends? Where is the shared risk?
  • CEOs and high executives at these companies are still expecting to take home mammoth compensation packages, after running their companies into the ground. Is it so unreasonable to expect these crooks to live on, say, three times the pay of a teacher, rather than 300 times?
  • Oh yes, and then there are the lavish parties and sales events that cost hundreds of thousands of dollars. Isn’t this a place to cut back when you have your hand in the public’s pocket?

    • And meanwhile, thousands of honest, hardworking people without financial savvy are losing their homes to foreclosure, often related to actions like balloon payments built into mortgages they didn’t comprehend, drawn up by these same companies. Can you say “taxpayer revolt”?

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    By Posted on Posted in Business Ethics, Frugality/Frugal Fun, Social and Economic Justice

    When I found out the other day that no sooner had insurance giant AIG accepted a huge bailout from the taxpayers–that’s us–that they had spent $400,000 on a posh weeklong retreat at the St. Regis Monarch Beach, a very expensive resort, including a $10,000 tab at the bar, and $24,400 on spa and salon services, I was too steamed to even blog about it. I knew that if I let my fingers loose on this one, I’d probably say something I’d regret. So I kept my mouth shut.

    Today, I found out that they’d planned to have a similar retreat a week later, at the Ritz-Carlton in Half Moon Bay, California, but this one they canceled–not because they’ve come to their senses, but because of the very understandable public backlash about the first retreat. Meanwhile, they’ve got their hand at the public trough, asking for another $37.8 billion. And they have the nerve to complain about cancellation fees!

    “We’ll certainly lose some money in cancellation fees, but it’s just beyond the point of trying to conduct these meetings given the uncertainty that’s taking place.”

    Yes, there are usually cancellation fees when you cancel a large event at the last minute. These things are booked months in advance and the hotels can’t resell all that space on that kind of timeframe. But still–you pay the fees, grit your teeth, and at least pretend that you care enough about the taxpayers who are bailing you out that you don’t go on expensive and totally unnecessary junkets. And you sure as anything don’t stick the public with your bills at the bars and spas; those should be borne by the individuals consuming the services.

    Rooms at these hotels range from $400 to $1200 per night. The government should demand repayment of every penny spent at the St. Regis on this pig-in-a-poke. Can you imagine what Limbaugh and the rest would say if they found a “welfare queen” enjoying this kind of high life at government expense? Well, when corporate executives are the ones getting welfare, the standards should be similar.

    You want to run up big bills to reward your high performers? Fine–but don’t ask us to pay for it.

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