Saturday, August 02, 2008

Commission Junction Settlement

I'm posting an email I just received with the rest of the bloggers. I've never been a big fan of PPC Arbitrage, AKA SPAM, but did have an account with Commission Junction and a couple of ads up on parked sites for the heck of it.

For those of you who don't know, PPC Arbitrage is the activity of promoting a website that consists of links to other websites. The website owner makes money when people come to his website and click on the links to these other websites, who pay him a certain amount of money per click. The website usually has no valuable content itself, because if it did, the viewer would be less likely to click one of the links to leave the site.

Apparently Commission Junction didn't do enough to squash to hackers and scammers that naturally flock to PPC Arbitrage, AKA SPAM, AKA "trying to get something for nothing." Not that spamming isn't a lot of work, but it's not really "productive" as far as I'm concerned.

Anyway, here's what went down:

Settlement Recovery Center v. ValueClick settlement

RE: Important Legal Notice Regarding Commission Junction’s Affiliate Network

If you joined or were a member of the affiliate marketing networks operated by ValueClick, Inc., Commission Junction, Inc. and/or Be Free (collectively, “Defendants”), between April 20, 2003 and the present, you may be a class member in Settlement Recovery Center et al. v. ValueClick, Inc. et al., No. 2:07-cv-02638-FMC-CTx, a lawsuit which is pending in the Central District of California. The Settlement Notice informs you of the Court's certification of a class for settlement purposes; the nature of the claims alleged; your right to participate in, or exclude yourself from, the class; a proposed settlement; and how you can claim an award of advertising credits under the settlement or object to the settlement.

The proposed settlement will resolve claims that Defendants failed to adequately monitor Commission Junction’s Network for the use by third parties of software that does not comply with Commission Junction’s (“CJ”) Publisher Code of Conduct and that is intended to steal or divert commissions from publishers on CJ’s network (“Non-compliant Software”), failed to adequately monitor or prevent third parties from engaging in the theft or “hijacking” of commissions from Advertisers and Publishers on CJ’s Network, and failed to make sufficient disclosures regarding the existence of Non-compliant Software and commission theft, resulting in losses to both advertisers and publishers on the CJ Network.

The proposed settlement will provide a monetary recovery to eligible class members. For class members that currently maintain an account on the CJ Network will receive payment through payments or credits deposited or applied to their CJ accounts; eligible class members that no longer have accounts on the Commission Junction Network will receive a check for an equal amount.

If you are a member of the class, your legal rights are affected by whether you act or do not act. You should review the Settlement Notice as soon as possible as there are several important deadlines that you must meet to take certain actions in connection with this proposed settlement. In particular, the deadline for filing an objection or excluding yourself from the proposed settlement is September 30, 2008. For further information, please refer to the Settlement Notice.


For a copy of the Settlement Notice, click on the link, or visit the case website at www.CJSettlement.com