Marketers reacted with weariness to the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) proposal to implement an online "Do-Not-Track" option that would allow consumers to opt out of all third-party tracking and behaviorally-targeted advertising.

American voters sent a clear message about government spending last month when they voted in a new House of Representatives class dominated by Republicans.

Marketers are hoping that online advertising self-regulation initiatives announced last month will increase trust and transparency with consumers, and government.

Retailers are again rallying to fight state initiatives to tax merchants who do business with residents without a physical presence in their states.

Merck, the manufacturer of painkiller Vioxx, has settled deceptive advertising charges for $58 million and agreed to submit all new television com­mercials for its drugs to the Food and Drug Administration for review for the next seven years. The agency had challenged Merck's direct-to-consumer television ads, which began in 1999.

The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals has agreed to review a case, in which ad-supported freeware company Zango sued spyware removal company Kaspersky Lab in 2007, alleging that Kaspersky interfered with Zango's relation­ships with its customers by deleting Zango's pop-up serving program.

The US District Court for the Northern District of Illinois ordered Bernard Fromstein and Judy Provencher to pay more than $49 million for their role in the 2006 Datacom Marketing Inc. case. The Canada-based scheme allegedly used telemarketing call centers to scam American businesses into paying for business directories and listings they did not order.

MySpace has claimed $230 million in damages — the largest anti-spam judgment ever — from Sanford Wallace and Walter Rines for allegedly stealing passwords through "phishing" scams on the social networking site.

Web-based classifieds giant Craigslist has countersued its minority owner, eBay Inc., for allegedly violating federal and state antitrust laws. It claims eBay attempted to use information from its 28% stake in Craigslist to benefit its own classifieds site Kijiji, which launched last year in the US.

Google is being sued by David Almeida, a private investigator who is using Google AdSense to promote his business. Almeida filed charged against the Web giant in federal court last Tuesday claiming the company deceived him and charged for ads displayed on third-party Web sites, a service he claims not to have requested — Almeida alleges that he left the "optional" box blank.