July 3, 2011 by admin
The U.S. government has opened the latest chapter in its long-running effort to end the proliferation of consumer scams involving acai berry nutritional products.
On April 19, the Federal Trade Commission said that it had gone to court to request temporary restraining orders against ten marketers of acai berry products. The marketers had been using a tactic that’s probably been observed by anybody who regularly uses the Internet: they had set up websites that were posing as news websites. Some even used the names of prominent media outlets, including ABC News, CBS News and Fox, without permission, according to the FTC.
The supposed news story that all of these websites featured was an investigative report on the benefits of the acai berry diet. The fake news reporters featured in the story invariably described highly improbable weight loss. In the examples cited by the FTC, the fake journalists claimed to have lost 25 pounds over four weeks without any changes in their diet or exercise routines other than starting a regiment of acai berry supplements.
This follows the pattern that marketers of acai berry diet supplements have pursued for years. Science has found little if any evidence that acai berries have health benefits that are any more special than those of more common types of berries that you can buy for a few dollars a package in the produce section of your neighborhood supermarket. But marketers of acai berry juice and supplements on the Internet have claimed that these products have nearly magical properties to promote weight loss, to prevent cancer, and to provide nearly every other health benefit imaginable.
Enough consumers find these claims credible that marketers have been able to sell juice for upwards of $40 a bottle and monthly supplies of dietary supplements for $50 to $80.
What’s more, offers for acai berry products have frequently served as the basis for Internet credit-card billing scams. In some of these, customers have signed up for what they believed to be a fourteen-day free trial, but found that their credit cards were billed with monthly recurring fees. In other cases, the consumers found that they were billed for other, supposedly related diet and health products, aside from the acai berry supplements they ordered. The victims of these scams have generally said that the marketers make it as difficult as possible for them to get refunds or to cancel the recurring charges.
It appear from documents that the FTC filed in court that the marketers must have found the fake-news websites to be an extremely effective sales tool, judging by how heavily they invested in them. The marketers truly blanketed the Internet with this advertising. In documents that the FTC filed for its restraining order against IMM Interactive (which is also known as Intermark Communications, Intermark Media and COPEAC), the FTC claimed that IMM had spent more than $1.3 million over the past year buying advertising to promote its fake-news websites; had purchased more than a billion ads, including spots on heavily trafficked websites such as weather.com and msnbc.com; and had gotten more than a million customers to click on those ads.
The upshot, the FTC speculates, is that IMM probably made back far more than the $1.3 million it invested in that advertising. And IMM was only one of at least 10 marketers using fake-news websites.
If you are one of the many thousands of people who may have signed up to buy acai berry products based on bogus health claims, or who were billed for products when you only intended to sign up for a free trial, you might be able to get refunded by asking your credit card company for a charge-back.
You should also get in touch with the FTC, as it appears to be serious about trying to end the acai berry scam.
By: Eric A. Stone
Tags: Abc News, Acai Berries, Acai Berry, Berry Juice, Cbs News, Consumer Scams, Credit Card Billing, Diet Supplements, Exercise Routines, Fake News, Federal Trade Commission, Health Benefit, Internet Credit Card, Investigative Report, Magical Properties, Neighborhood Supermarket, News Reporters, News Websites, Temporary Restraining Orders, Types Of Berries
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February 7, 2011 by admin
When starting a business, the first step should always be to first determine the best ways to protect yourself and your assets from being lost due to unforeseen problems and challenges that could come up when operating a business.
The first and most important step is business incorporation. Business incorporation involves setting up a separate legal entity to be the operator of the business. You can be an owner of the entity and you can also be actively involved as a director, officer and agent of the business. When you incorporate, it is the corporation that is party conducting the business. When you are representing the business, you are acting as an agent or employee. What this does is it creates a layer of protection between you personally and the business activity.
It is business activity that can give rise to liability. Lets say your business enters into a supplier contract and there is a dispute. Or, another example might be if your business has a store and someone slips and falls. Or, say you have a rogue employee who sues the business for wrongful termination. In all these cases, the party that needs to address the dispute is the legal entity business. Without business incorporation, it would be you personally who would be the target of the problems.
And, if in the end of any of these kinds of disputes, you are found liable, then your personal assets are at risk for making good on the liability. On the other hand, if you run your business through a separate legal vehicles such as a corporation or a limited liability company, then it is the company’s assets that are at risk- but not your personally.
Because business disputes and challenges are inevitable in almost any entrepreneurial venture, this protection is so important. Furthermore, with the substantial rise of small business lawsuits (a trend that is only continuing), this becomes even more essential for business owners.
Business Incorporation can be handled as an administrative matter with the state agency that processes formations. You can handle it yourself but it is critical that you learn all the specific requirements because an improper incorporation can put your liability at risk. Another option is to hire a lawyer or for a more affordable alternative, you can use a reputable incorporation services provider – just make sure they are experienced.
By: Amy McDaniel
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February 7, 2011 by admin
Copyright is a legal matter, which is backed up by the majority of governments throughout the world. It gives the exclusive rights to the original creator of any work. A copyright is your right to your copy. You have the right to make copies, to sell your work, to share it, etc. No one else has this right until you sign it over, or give some form of consent. Copyright laws gives you the right to be properly compensated for your work should it be used, you can benefit from it financially or be credited to the work as you see fit.
Copyright gives the ability for companies and for individuals to prevent the complete copying of books, music, photographs or any sort of created materials from being recreated and resold by someone else. It is illegal to reprint or redistribute copyrighted material, and in a case where a person has done this, that person can be sued in a civil court proceeding. If the case is extreme, if there is intent to damage the plaintiff’s income or value of the work, it can be tried in a criminal court.
This isn’t always completely binding. The courts usually allow ‘fair use’ of some copyrighted materials. It prevents people being sued over every little incident. This means that if you choose to use pieces of material in order to review it, or for educational purposes, or to make a parody or under other certain conditions, you are excused from being sued for copyright violations.
Today, there are additional laws that cover the Internet, and the use of copyrighted work on websites and shared through networking sites. The Internet makes it easy to copy and paste a written work, and sometimes assumptions are made about what is deemed to be ‘fair use’ of copyrighted material. Since every case is unique, and depending on the severity of the violation, there are often different ways to handle each incident. This might include a simple enforcement to remove the copied material from a website, to an actual lawsuit, which could cost the defendant as much as $100,000 per violation.
By: Calissa Hatton
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