FTC Rules Operators of Jerk.com Deceived Consumers, Violated FTC Act

From the March 25th press release--FTC Rules Jerk, LLC and John Fanning Deceived Consumers, Violated FTC Act | Federal Trade Commission:

"The Federal Trade Commission has granted summary decision against the operators of Jerk.com, a website that billed itself as “the anti-social network,” for deceiving users about the source of content on the website. The Commission found that the operators – Jerk, LLC (“Jerk”) and John Fanning – misled consumers by claiming that content on the website was posted by other users. Instead, most of the content came from Facebook profiles mined by the operators.

"The Commission also found that the company and Fanning misrepresented the benefits of a paid membership which, for $30, purportedly allowed consumers to update information in their Jerk.com profiles. In fact, consumers who paid for the membership were unable to correct information about them on the site, and did not receive anything of value for their “membership.”

"The final order and an accompanying opinion resulted from an administrative complaint the FTC staff filed in 2014 against Jerk and Fanning. The summary decision was requested by FTC staff trying the case.

"The order requires the company and Fanning to delete all personal and customer information collected during the operation of the now-defunct website within 30 days, and prohibits them from selling or disclosing any of that information. The order also prohibits them from misrepresenting the source of any content on a website, including personal information, and from misrepresenting the benefits of joining any service.

"The Commission vote to issue the opinion granting summary decision and the final order was 5-0.

"The company or Fanning may file a petition for review of the Commission Opinion and Final Order with a U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals within 60 days after service of the Final Order."

"The Federal Trade Commission works for consumers to prevent fraudulent, deceptive, and unfair business practices and to provide information to help spot, stop, and avoid them. To file a complaint in English or Spanish, visit the FTC’s online Complaint Assistant or call 1-877-FTC-HELP (1-877-382-4357). The FTC enters complaints into Consumer Sentinel, a secure, online database available to more than 2,000 civil and criminal law enforcement agencies in the U.S. and abroad."  (source: FTC)

See also: FTC Charges Operators of “Jerk.com” Website With Deceiving Consumers and

Jerk, LLC, d/b/a Jerk.com, In the Matter of


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Why New gTLD Domain Names Fail To Work Across the Internet

Every Day More Problems Are Coming To Light With ICANN's New gTLDs (Generic Top-Level Domains):

ICANN was warned, repeatedly--even by one of their own "insiders" [see article excerpt below by Ram Mohan, Executive Vice President and CTO, Afilias, and also a member of the ICANN Board of Directors since 2008]--but ICANN arrogantly ignored the warnings and public interest issues such as the universal acceptance failure of new gTLD domains, as well as issues of Internet stability and security in its money-grab a/k/a the new gTLDs program--

More Problems Crop Up With Universal Acceptance of Top Level Domains (by Ram Mohan): "... George Santayana quote, "Those that cannot remember the past are doomed to repeat it" ...[is] an apt warning for what is currently happening — again — with the hundreds of new generic Top Level Domains (gTLDs) that are launching... and failing to work as expected on the Internet... [I]n the early 2000s, seven new gTLDs were launched: .AERO, .BIZ, .COOP, .INFO, .MUSEUM, .NAME and .PRO...  Any TLDs that were more than three characters long promptly ran into usability issues. I know this from first-hand experience with .INFO, for which my company, Afilias, is the registry operator... I spent a good part of my time, in the first five years after .INFO launched, working with vendors to get their systems to accept .INFO email addresses and .INFO domain names as valid. Now, 13 years later, it's still possible to find systems that reject .INFO addresses. From that experience, I developed my three rules of TLD acceptance.

"Mohan's Three Rules of TLD Acceptance:

1. An old TLD [e.g., .COM, .NET, .ORG] will be accepted more often than a new TLD.
2. An ASCII-only TLD will be accepted more than an IDN TLD.
3. A two or three letter TLD will be accepted more often than a longer ccTLD or gTLD.

"Web browsers... have varying rules for how to deal with a website address in a top-level domain that the browser does not recognize...  many applications and apps that use the Internet still refer to a locally held (and quickly outdated) list of "valid" TLD names, rather than using the DNS to determine domain name validity... the issue of universal acceptance never really got solved, the topic takes on heightened importance due to the creation of hundreds of new top-level domains on the Internet... in the current crop of new TLDs, even three character strings get caught in the mix. What was previously considered primarily an infrastructure-level issue is now poised to become a major user-level issue, with negative impact on both the regular Internet user and inside corporations... " (emphasis added, read more here)

But I guess the money ICANN was collecting from new gTLD applicants was too hard to resist--particularly when you look and see who benefits from ICANN's exploding revenue--the exorbitant compensation, benefits, and "expense reimbursements" for ICANN directors, officers and staff, expanding offices and overhead, excessive payments to ICANN-favored third parties etc., for contractor "services."

Question: "Is it a deceptive, unfair or fraudulent business practice to "sell" or "offer for registration" domain names that do not work across the Internet?"

UPDATE: see ICANN 52, Universal Acceptance, New gTLD Domain Names "break stuff"

see also: ICANN, New gTLD Domain Names, Universal Acceptance Another #FAIL - 14 October 2014

Caveat Emptor!

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