Migrants to IJ, 2007

This isn't actually a new concept in the law, or to corporations.

My guess is that there will be a click-through agreement that hands some editorial control over to the sponsor to maintain the "sponsored" status. I can think of lots of things--religion, politics, gender issues, sexual orientation--that may be a problem for a company that really

What concerns me is how much users may not understand about those agreements. It will depend on the relationship they establish in that agreement, but it could be a big conflict of interest to be branded that way. If you work for a competitor of a sponsor company--even a conglomerate that appears unrelated--users could be violating employment agreements or confidentiality agreements they sign when they start work. And those things aren't always limited to high profile people. Even in a call center, I've signed those kinds of agreements. Companies like LJ are sometimes excepted in blog/online policies for companies, but the branding is an entirely different kettle of fish.

The sponsor can refuse to sponsor an account, and the account would lose its "paid feature" aspects--the extra icons, storage space, comment editing, increased tracking, and so on.

I don't think they're planning on giving any editing/filtering options to the sponsors, just the ability to yank their sponsorship if they don't approve of the account.

To make a protest effective, there'd need to be a whole swarm of people grabbing the same sponsor (it seems there'll be several to choose from), and posting squicky and anti-sponsor messages, and then going out of their way to notify the sponsor of how their name/logo are being used. (And then, when the sponsorship is pulled, move on to the next sponsor.)

However, given the number of Russian users who will very likely be just fine with the sponsor-paid accounts, it's not likely to make any difference to LJ; SUP has basically announced "we're doing this for the Russian blogging crowd who use LJ as a professional resource; you open-source activist fanatics can move along to another service now. You built it, but we bought it, and it's ours now."

No no, extra icons. :p

That's actually not a bad idea, at all. LJ could break out however many "sponsor categories" with similar products, etc., then have a user sign to that line of sponsorship.

Then again, the problem of trouble-makers, (say, the Satanist signing with Zondervan, e.g.), however, would still exist.

This'll be nice, though, give WFI et al some nice, clear targets.

I actually wouldn't mind using my page to hype, say, Sci-Fi Network

Me...not so much. I'm thinking that Sci-Fi would be less than thrilled by the kinky John/Ronon/Rodney/Teyla fic.

I agree with you and you've said all that I wanted to say. :)

I mean, any of my 'gray-area content' journal entries goes over here anyway and not on my LJ so I wouldn't have to worry if there would be any 'policing' or things like that.

I'm with you. If people had a choice as to which companies would be placing the ads, I'd have less of a problem with it; and maybe others wouldn't either. Users who do opt for a sponsored account could also avoid having ads from companies they dislike/disagree with or are boycotting (for whatever reason) from appearing on their page.

For example, I work for "Retail Chain A." It would be embarassing and potentially problematic for me if ads for "Retail Chain B" were to appear on my blog. It would look like I was supporting the competition.

I also wouldn't mind having ads for products I actually use on my blog, provided they aren't cluttering up the page too much; but seeing as how I am a female, I'd have a real problem carrying ads for products designed to combat erectile dysfunction or male pattern baldness. ;)

OMFG. May I?