The Association of National Advertisers (ANA) has slammed plans by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) to allow just about any word to become a top-level domain (TLD).

The ANA has written to the president of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), Rod Beckstrom, flagging major flaws in the new TLD program.

U.S. based Consumer Watchdog has asked the U.S. Federal Trade Commission to investigate eight (8) online advertising companies for violating their privacy policies regarding online tracking. Furthermore, according to Consumer Watchdog, the companies’ deceptive behavior means that self-regulation of online privacy and behavioral advertising isn’t working.

According to Consumer Watchdog, the companies – 24/7 Real Media, Adconion, AudienceScience, Netmining, Undertone, Vibrant Media, Wall Street on Demand and TARGUSinfo Advisor – are all members of the self-regulatory Network Advertising Initiative (NAI). Yet, based on a recent study, all violated their stated policy of not tracking consumers who opt out of receiving ads based on their online activity.

According to Ryan Beldham, founder of MyWebRevolution.com, Google is a monopoly. In this interview, I asked Ryan why he thinks Google is a monopoly and what he thinks should be done about it. As a libertarian and fan of free markets I still think people are free to do business with Google or go elsewhere. What about you? Do you agree with Ryan? Share your thoughts in the Comments.

Anna: Why do you consider Google to be a monopoly?

Ryan: This is not an easy question to answer and is really the basis of my entire argument. But to try and sum it up, you must first know how to define a monopoly. I define it as a product or service that has exclusive control in its market space, and, must control the prices set in that market. It is important to note that this is a two-fold definition and gives a set of criteria for determining what a monopoly is.

Is the online casino industry consolidating? Or is CasinoRewards.com gambling on its acquisition of no less than seven (7) online casinos? (I couldn’t resist the pun).

CasinoRewards.com has just announced the acquisition of GrandHotelCasino.com, LuxuryCasino.com, ColosseumCasino.com, VegasSlotCasino.com, Vegas7Casino.com, VegasCountryCasino.com and VegasJokerCasino.com. The acquisitions bring CasinoRewards.com’s portfolio of online gambling websites to a total of 32 brands.

Are you liable if your Facebook fans, Twitter followers or others post flattering but misleading testimonials about your products or services on social networking sites? The answer is ‘yes’ for at least one Internet marketing firm – Australian company, Allergy Pathway Pty Ltd.

The Australian Federal Court recently ordered Allergy Pathway Pty Ltd (formerly ‘Advanced Allergy Elimination’) and its director, Paul Keir, to each pay AUD $7,500 in fines for allowing false, misleading and deceptive testimonials about the company’s allergy treatments to stay on its website and on third party websites, including Facebook.

Despite moves to repeal the controversial ‘affiliate nexus tax’ laws in North Carolina and Rhode Island, the state legislatures of Connecticut and Vermont will still enact similar laws.

Essentially, affiliate nexus tax laws force online retailers to collect sales tax on sales made through affiliates who reside in the relevant states. Fans of the laws believe they are a sensible means of collecting owed taxes and are only fair considering that bricks-and-mortar retailers based in, say, Connecticut or Vermont, have to collect sales tax on the sales they make.

On Thursday Google won its lawsuit against a bunch of Internet marketers selling products promising, among other things, “Easy Cash with Google”.

The U.S. District Court judge, Judge Bruce S. Jenkins issued a permanent injunction and a $1.6 million judgment against Bloosky Interactive LLC (trading as Just Think Media, Online Cash Success Kit, Quick Profit Kit, JDW Media and Edirect Software), Crush LLC, Hyper Interactive Media LLC and Search 4 Profit LLC.

Online advertising network Chitika, Inc. has settled the lawsuit brought against it by the U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) in February 2010. The FTC sued Chitika over its behavioral targeting based ad platform which, instead of letting Internet users opt-out of behavioral based ads for 10 years, actually set opt-outs to 10 days.

Chitika said that it fixed the problem upon learning of the bug, and that the 10-year expiry has worked since March 2010. According to the company, during the nearly two years (May 2008 to February 2010) that the bug persisted only around 30 people per month were affected, out of some 450 million monthly unique users.

Verizon has filed a lawsuit against Melbourne, Australia based domain parking company Above.com, its parent company Trellian and several of its key employees for cybersquatting and contributory cybersquatting. Verizon is seeking an immediate transfer of the domain names and damages worth at least $1.83 million (based on $100,000 per domain name infringement plus attorneys’ fees).

Verizon alleges the defendants used false identities to register, use or provide WHOIS privacy protection for more than 183 domain names that infringed Verizon’s trademarks. These include such domain names as verizonprepaidphone.com, vewrizonwireless.com and vierizon.net.

Well-known domain name investor, Rick Schwartz, has published a volcanic blog post, accusing domain name registrar Moniker and its parent company Oversee.net of covering up an incident in which an employee allegedly and wrongfully accessed a Moniker customer’s account.

According to Rick Schwartz’s latest blog post and an earlier post published in December last year a former employee of Moniker wrongfully accessed a Moniker customer’s account and then contacted the customer’s employer about the domain name. Apparently, the domain name was derogatory towards the employer.