idk if anyone has told people this but if you're against a law that protects people against hate speech. youre a bad person

A Critical Examination of the Mediation Bill, 2021: India's Dispute Resolution Future

Mediation is an example of ADR. ADR, or Alternate Dispute Resolution, refers to methods for resolving disagreements between people that do not include a formal trial. ADR processes are less formal than typical court proceedings and help to save money while obtaining quick results.

Mediation is a method of settling disagreements with the assistance of a neutral third party who, while leading the process, assists the disputed parties in reaching an agreement. It is a voluntary approach that does not impose a solution but rather offers a conducive environment for disputing parties to come to an agreement.

Also Read: Purpose and Powers of the Court to Issue Commissions

This third, impartial party is referred to as a mediator, who is not a judge but rather a facilitator who assists the parties in finding common ground and communicating. And, if agreed upon, the mediator's decision can be binding on the parties, just like a court ruling. Mediation, as a kind of ADR, is not a new concept in India; it has been practiced for centuries. Previously, informal panchayats were employed to settle disputes between two sides, with the village chief or the old acting as mediators.

This gained popularity after Lok Adalats were reintroduced into our nation's judicial system, with their verdicts given the same weight as those of a civil court. The Arbitration and Conciliation Act, enacted in 1996, established precise definitions and established a streamlined set of norms in this regard.

Why Is A Mediation Bill Required?

As of August 2, 2022, the Supreme Court of India has 71,411 pending cases, of which 56,365 were civil cases and 15,076 were criminal cases. As of July 29 of this year, 59,55,907 cases were pending in 25 High Courts across the country. Backlogs in subordinate courts total 4.13 crores.

This demonstrates the overcrowding in the Indian judicial system, which is exacerbated by a shortage of judges, flexible procedures, and resources. India still has a long way to go in order to clear its backlog of cases.

As a result, in order to address the problem of arrears and delays, ADR, and notably Mediation, become critical, and it becomes necessary to bring it within certain legislative boundaries. Mediation was previously governed by the Code of Civil Procedure or the regulations established by mediation institutes of several High Courts.

However, the federal government has already presented a draft mediation bill with the goal of institutionalizing and formalizing the mediation process in India. With the passage of the bill, mediation may become more popular as a means of obtaining prompt and enforceable remedies in a structured informal framework in which the parties play an active role. As a result, this bill is critical.

The measure has not yet been passed and is currently being referred by the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Law and Justice, which has recommended certain important revisions in the bill. The bill's passage is eagerly anticipated, and it will usher in a new era of conflict resolution in the country.

Current Situation

At the moment, mediation in India could be:

Referred to the Court (under Code of Civil Procedure, 1908)

Private (under a contract) (under a contract)

According to the provisions of a certain statute (for example, the Companies Act, 2013 or the Consumer Protection Act, 2019), these services are supplied by private ADR centers or centers established by the respective courts or tribunals.

This is referred to as court-annexed mediation. Also, in the 129th report of the Law Commission of India, it was proposed to make it mandatory for the Court to send conflicts to mediation for resolution. It was mentioned in the landmark 2010 case of Afcons Below Ltd. v. M/s Cherian Varkey Constructions.

Another major ruling came from the Supreme Court in 2013 in the case of B.S. Krishna Murthy v. B.S. Nagraj 5, in which it authorized the family court to submit matters involving maintenance, custody, and other issues to mediation with the cooperation of the parties. One of the most well-known cases resolved through mediation was the takeover of MTN, the South African telecom company, by Mukesh and Anil Dhirubhai Ambani.

The Bill's Key Features

Bill Implementation:

The provisions of this law would apply to mediation proceedings held in India if and only if the following conditions were met:

Only domestic parties are involved, which means that all parties live or are incorporated in India.

The issue is commercial in nature, and at least one of the parties is from another country.

If it is mentioned in the mediation agreement that the procedures will be conducted in accordance with this bill,

If the central or state government is a party to the bill, it will apply in the following circumstances:

It's a business conflict.

Other notified conflicts

Mediation Before Litigation:

Before addressing any tribunal or filing any suit in court, the parties in conflict must take steps to settle their issue, whether commercial or civil, by resorting to pre-litigation mediation, even if a mediation agreement does not exist. Though the parties wish it, the court or tribunal might refer them to a mediation proceeding even if they were unable to resolve through pre-litigation mediation.

Mediators are appointed:

Unless otherwise agreed, the mediators can be appointed by the parties and of any nationality, provided that the foreign mediator has the requisite qualifications that may be specified in domestic regulations. The mediator can also be appointed by any institution that provides mediation services, subject to the person's acceptance. In the event of a conflict of interest or doubt, the parties have the option of replacing the mediators. The bill also specifies the procedures and procedures to be followed in order to terminate or replace a mediator's mandate.

Proceeding with Mediation:

The mediation proceedings must be concluded within 180 days (may be extended by the parties for 180 days). These procedures must be kept private. Furthermore, after two sessions, the parties may choose to withdraw from this process. Mediation annexed by a court must be done within the limitations of the court's guidelines and within their territorial authority. The mediator shall determine the language(s) to be used during this procedure with the parties' cooperation. The mediator is not bound by the Indian Evidence Act, 1872 or the Code of Civil Procedure, 1908 (5 of 1908) (1 of 1872).

Agreement Reached Through Mediation:

Agreements reached through mediation and formally signed by the mediator and the parties in dispute are binding and enforceable in law, much like court judgements. Subject to section 29, it shall be enforced in accordance with the provisions of the Code of Civil Procedure, 1908, in the same manner as if it were a judgment and/or decree passed by a court, and may accordingly be relied on by any of the parties or persons claiming through them, as a defense, set off, or otherwise in any legal proceedings. If any party wishes to challenge the mediated settlement agreement, they may do so in court or before a body with competent authority on the following grounds:

Fraud;

Corruption;

Gross immorality;

Impersonation.

Unless otherwise agreed, all fees, including the cost of the mediation service provider, mediator's fee, and so on, must be shared equally by both parties.

Online Dispute Resolution:

Online mediation refers to the use of computer programs and networks to conduct mediation procedures, including pre-litigation mediation, as defined in this act, via secure rooms, encrypted e-mail services, and audio and video conferencing. This must be done in accordance with the Information Technology Act of 2000. With the parties' cooperation, online mediation can be used entirely or partially. This must be accomplished by taking all necessary precautions to ensure the secrecy and integrity of the proceedings. This must be communicated in accordance with the IT Act of 2000 requirements.

India's Mediation Council:

Through publication in the Official Gazette, the federal government must establish an organization to be known as the Mediation Council of India, to achieve the purposes of this law, which would perform the tasks and duties described in the bill. The council must be a body corporate with the same name, with a common seal, perpetual succession, the right to withhold or dispose of property (immovable and movable), and the ability to engage into contracts.

The council must comprise a chairperson, two full-time members with mediation and ADR experience, three ex-officio members, including the Law Secretary and the Expenditure Secretary, and one part-time member. The Council's functions will include registering mediators, developing norms and guidelines, promoting local and international mediation in India, recognizing mediation service providers and institutes, and so on.

Providers of mediation services and mediation institutes:

According to the requirements of this bill, the mediation service providers recognized by the council must be rated in accordance with the Council's regulations. The service providers can execute the following functions: a) Maintaining and credentialing a panel of mediators. b) Offering mediator services to facilitate mediation. b) Providing infrastructural and other associated assistance in order to carry out the mediation proceedings. d) Registering and filing the mediated settlement agreement in accordance with the provisions of this bill. The council shall also recognize Mediation Institutes, which shall operate in accordance with the Council's regulations.

Mediation in the Community:

Community Mediation can be used to mediate disputes that are likely to harm/affect the peace and harmony of the local families or people. This must be done through a panel of three mediators, which may include representatives from resident welfare organisations, a well-known local figure, or anybody else judged acceptable. The District Magistrate or Sub-Divisional Magistrate can form a panel to facilitate the binding settlement of a communal dispute for which an application has been filed by either party.

Fund for Mediation:

The Mediation Council must establish a fund called the "Mediation Fund" for the purpose of promoting, supporting, and facilitating mediation in our country. The grants granted by the Central and State governments, the amount deposited by others to contribute to this, the interest earned on investments made from this, and any other resources received must be credited to the fund. The accounts of the Mediation Council will be audited by the Comptroller and Auditor General of India.

Important Points:

Mediation, unlike arbitration or litigation, is a voluntary dispute resolution method with the permission of the parties that does not entail their judgement. Pre-litigation mediation for commercial and civil issues is mandated by the Mediation Draft Bill. This defeats the objective of mediation, which is mostly a voluntary process. If the parties are hesitant to mediate, it may potentially cause more delay in the resolution of the issue.

The Bill also requires that the mediators who preside over the proceedings be registered with the Mediation Council of India, a recognized mediation service provider chosen by a Court-annexed mediation center, and a Legal Service Authority. The requirement to register them at all four locations complicates and redundantizes the process.

The Draft Bill does not state whether a Mediation Service Provider may be a corporation.

The Bill states that the majority of the Council's activities would be carried out by adopting regulations, which must be adopted after receiving permission from the Central Government. The Council would only play a ceremonial role if the Government decided to exercise its duties. In some situations, the government may be a party to the mediation procedures, resulting in a conflict of interest.

The Draft Bill also lacks any responsibilities or repercussions for failing to register a Mediated Settlement Agreement.

The Bill makes no provision for settlement agreements reached through foreign mediation performed outside of India. Despite being a signatory to the Singapore Convention in August 2019, India is failed to ratify it. The Convention addresses the implementation of cross-border settlement agreements reached through international mediation. This is not addressed in either Part I or Part III of the Bill.

Section 22 of the law addresses the need for confidentiality on the part of both the parties in dispute and the mediator. However, the clause makes no mention of any punishment or culpability for willful violation of the principal goal of protecting confidentiality.

The Singapore Convention and Its Implications for Mediation in India

The Singapore Mediation Convention, also known as the United Nations Convention on International Settlement Agreements, has 55 signatories, including India. This Convention seeks to facilitate international trade by establishing standard, unified norms for resolving commercial disputes in a global context. However, India has yet to ratify this, which becomes necessary in order to reap all of the benefits and advantages of mediation.

With its ratification, a settlement agreement achieved through international 'commercial' mediation would be legally binding, according to Article 3 of the Singapore Convention. Ratification would also bring domestic laws into line with the Convention. Furthermore, Article 5(1)(e) states that mediators must adhere to particular requirements in order to offer a professional, ethical environment for mediation.

In order for India to ratify the Singapore Mediation Convention, the Indian Parliament must pass legislation implementing the Convention under Article 253 of the Constitution. The demand for legislation has increased because it is a more cost-effective approach that also saves businesses and foreign connections.

Settlements achieved through this Convention are anticipated to be enforceable and will not be referred back to arbitration, even if the other side defaults. Thus, India's acceptance of the Singapore Mediation Convention will aid in the resolution of disputes with parties outside of India, allowing them to skip the contractual path of obtaining implementation.

Conclusion

To summarize, there is no denying that the Bill, in its current form, has both advantages and negatives, and that it is a step in the right direction in terms of encouraging and facilitating mediation. It would not only bring uniformity, but also simplicity and confidence among the public to use mediation as a form of dispute settlement outside of the courtroom.

At the same time, the Bill contains several gaps and concerns that must be resolved before allowing it to enter into effect in order to ensure that the Act, when adopted, contains unambiguous measures to offer better legal underpinning. In addition, the government must take steps to make the general public aware of mediation and its benefits, as well as heavily promote it, so that people can reap the benefits.

This will also serve to relieve the country's beleaguered legal system and will become a popular tool to settle corporate and family issues in the near future.

PBTA Spelljammer GLOG Thing?

Recently, my father dug up his old Traveller and MegaTraveller books for me, and after having a lot of fun reading through them, I can definitively say I don’t ever want to GM the system. But it got me in a space-gaming mood and my mind turned to two things. First, the Uncharted Worlds game I was once a player in, which seems to have borrowed a lot of the good aspects of Traveller and put them into a PBTA system, which I love very much. Second, the AD&D setting Spelljammer which is an amazing science-fantasy fever dream that I’ve unfortunately never gotten to experience firsthand. Naturally, I decided I’d make an RPG. And, ever since I discovered it, GLOG has basically consumed a large part of my mindspace whenever I think about RPGs.

Now it’s about a month later, and I have a lot written, but even more still to write. My biggest issue is getting my thoughts organized. I’m always a lot neater when I know other people are going to see my work. So, in a hope to make things more coherent for myself, I’m going to let you in on what I have to far.

What I like about Spelljammer

Science fiction minus the science

Practically any science fiction trope you can think of fits into the setting, but when it comes to the actual science, it’s this weird-ass mix of a classical Greek and medieval alchemist understanding of the cosmos.

You don’t have to worry about players “um, actually”-ing you about what happens in the vacuum of space, because it’s actually not even a vacuum!

Magic = FTL

Despite the previous point, its science is actually still relatively “hard” when it comes to internal consistency and logical consequences to its different laws of reality than our own. The magic, on the other hand, is magic. My headcanon is that the speed of light imposes a hard limit, but magic is the one thing able to ignore it.

While people could theoretically pull off a no-magic spacecraft launch (if they had a few thousand more years of technological development), for the most part, if something is in space, it’s probably because a wizard decided they wanted it to be in space.

Weird-ass spaceships

Since a spaceship is “anything you can put a spelljamming throne in,” you get a delightful mix of regular boats, classic pulp sci-fi or space opera spaceships, weird organic tentacled things, and whatever else strikes your fancy.

What if a dragon died and all the kobolds that worshipped it somehow got enough spell slots to just pilot its corpse into space and start fucking shit up?

Sadly, Spelljammer doesn’t offer a lot of customization, instead just relying on a wide catalogue of weird ships used by different aliens.

Wizards

What I like about PBTA

Adaptable to basically any setting

There is a great wealth of hacks I can draw from

These two points go hand in hand. I haven’t, however, been able to find a specifically spelljammer-inspired PBTA hack, so that’s why I’m doing this.

The PBTA games I’ve read through in creating this (so far) are  Uncharted Worlds, Dungeon World, and the original Apocalypse World.

Encourages little preparation

My biggest challenge in running a game that’s interstellar in scope is my instinct to pre-prepare everything, which is already problem if I think I need to make an entire country, let alone an entire planet. But now we’re talking not only a planet but every planet.

While you can do worldbuilding as the GM for a PBTA game, you can also not do any, and let the players do all the work for you upon character creation. Dungeon World is especially good at this.

It’s fun

I’ve enjoyed every PBTA game I’ve been a player or a GM for, no exceptions (so far).

It’s extremely easy to teach people

Most of my friends are not as into learning new systems as I am. But most of them have already played at least one PBTA system, and if they haven’t, it wouldn’t be as much of a hassle as say, AD&D or Traveller.

What I like about GLOG

The four-template class blueprint

If PBTA character sheets are streamlined, I don’t even know what I’d call GLOG character sheets.

I don’t know if I’d shave my classes down quite as much, but I’m definitely taking notes from GLOG’s designs.

GLOG spellcasting

This is one of the things I like most about GLOG.

Spell dice to power FTL? Maybe 1 die per 30 light years or whatever, and the sum determines how fast the trip can be made? Doubles and triples can be malfunctions or space pirate attacks or something.

A shit ton of classes

I think I’d like to limit it to 10 or so classes, but I’m definitely going to get inspiration from some of the weirder GLOG classes along with the classes fighters/wizards/rogues.

An emphasis on interesting problem-solving

I think this is more just good game design than GLOG itself.

Encourages taking a weirder spin on fantasy lore that’s often taken for granted

Again, this seems like it’s just good worldbuilding, but a lot of GLOGgish writings do this, and I’d like to follow in their footsteps.

What I like (and dislike) about Traveller

I don’t like how obtuse it is

Reading the book sort of overwhelms me. It’s like they didn’t even try to make it accessible. It’s just endless black text on a white background, tables and diagrams strewn about haphazardly, and no art, not even just at the beginnings and ends of sections. The cover is a black void to symbolize the state of my mind after reading three pages.

When it comes to spaceships, I like a lot of crunch and granularity in their design

Something I found myself wishing for when playing Uncharted Worlds was a more involved ship design process. While they did clearly take notes from Traveller, it’s nothing like the original.

I don’t know what it is about spaceships. Characters I like simple and streamlined, but I guess reading through power plant matrices and choosing software and balancing it all on a budget gets me into the headspace I actually believe a spaceship creator would be in, whereas I don’t think the creation of a person usually involves that sort of design process.

I'm neutral on the crunch for everything else, but I think it's at odds with PBTA sensibilities

Plus, as I sort of mentioned in the PBTA section, I want my mostly 5e-playing friends to be willing to test this with me.

I like the psionics

I really like psionics, and I think Traveller properly captures the feel that I like for them.

However, I’m not a fan of “anyone can test their psionic abilities and then roll to maybe get powers.” I’m going to have a psionic class, which a character can start in if they want to have psionic powers, or they can multiclass into later if they want to discover their psionic potential later on. If they don’t want their character to have latent potential, they can just never take any levels in the class.

I dislike the highly-defined setting

I know it’s supposed to be adaptable to most sci-fi settings, but the books reference their own universe and history so much that it doesn’t really feel that way.

How do I synthesize this all into one game?

Setting-wise, I’m mostly drawing from Spelljammer, as well as Star Wars, Numenera, and my own imagination. I don’t want to define many specific planets or empires or sectors or whatever since I prefer most of the worldbuilding work be done by players during character creation. Also, if you know of any very low-science space fantasy fiction that I should read, please send it my way.

I do have very specific ideas about how I want spaceships and space travel to work, which I think need their own post later. You might get a pretty good sense of what I’m going for from the Spelljammer and Traveller sections, though. My plan is to take advantage of something like Traveller’s very granular and in-depth ship creation to let players make their own completely batshit Spelljammer-style spaceships. I think a ship needs its own character sheet.

I’m doing the PBTA thing where each class has a character sheet. I haven’t decided whether I’m doing the standard 6 stats or making up some weird ones. The former is definitely easier to sell to people but I think the latter is cooler.  Also, since you need a spellcasting class to have FTL what do you do if nobody picks one? I don’t want to get in a situation where I have to tell them “one of you needs to switch classes,” that just feels bad and could create animosity. A solution I’m slightly leaning towards is having only one of each character sheet, then making sure there’s always one fewer non-spellcasting class option than there are players, so by pure mathematics someone will end up able to power the ship, and I don’t need to force anyone to change on my own. The issue there is then I can’t have more than 3-5 non-spellcasting class options depending on party size, and I’d prefer a larger and more varied class pool. Another option would be to have magic hirelings available, but I want spellcasters with the ability to do FTL to feel like these big, weird, and powerful personalities, so having them just available as hirelings sort of it cheapens that in my opinion.  Maybe it’s not actually important that the party always have access to their own interstellar travel? I could see the PCs being like a bunch of interstellar hitchhikers. Very Douglas Adams. 

That’s just about everything that I don’t think needs a separate post. I hope you enjoyed it, and if you have any thoughts about this potential horrible chimera of a system I’d love to hear them! You can reach me here through Tumblr or at Robot_Face#7919 on the OSR discord server.

Last Stand of the Wreckers, Issue #4: This Series is Awash With Lippy Sons of Guns

Issue #4 starts off with an uncomfortably handsome Prowl. I mean honestly, look at this asshole, he’s simply too pretty.

I don’t think Roche has ever drawn the guy ugly, but this is on another level.

We’re in a flashback sequence here, as we start to gain an understanding of just why exactly Ironfist got put on the Wreckers in the first place. Back when he was working at Kimia, Ironfist got a call from Prowl. Seems Prowl’s read his work, and is impressed by the sheer amount of effort he’s put into it. They chat a bit about it, but no call with Prowl is ever casual, and he asks Ironfist if he’s ever been interested in actually being a Wrecker. Which, of course he has, but he’d never exactly been cut out for that kind of work, especially after his Accident™. Prowl has a little push in that area, because he’s Prowl, and makes a deal; Ironfist joins the Wreckers as a weapon expert, and in exchange he does something for Prowl.

We won’t find out what exactly Ironfist’s agreed to do until later, as we jump back to the present, where the Guzzle and Kup are about to lay the smackdown on some unsuspecting Decepticons.

With how many cameras are currently trained on you guys, I can’t say you really have the time for wisecracks, old-timer.

That big vault door behind them leads to the cell of one of the most notorious Autobots ever to grace the galaxy- Grimlock. This is the “help” Springer requested they find, meaning that he’s a sort of last resort, which tells you just how much of a powerhouse the guy is. Volatile, sure, but a powerhouse regardless.

Too bad the cell’s empty.

Snare steps in to explain just why that is, having snuck up on our Big Gulp duo.

Well I’m sure that won’t be a plot point later on.

Of course, Guzzle doesn’t really feel inclined to believe a word of what this Getaway kitbash says, and starts threatening to shoot him. Snare however, has even more secrets to tell.

Perceptor and pals have finally discovered just what the hell it is that they’ve been looking for all this time. Aequitas is a supercomputer, and a massive one at that. They’re here to download its memory files. Topspin is less than pleased with this whole thing.

Ironfist agrees- there’s no way they’re going to be able to get all the data in Aequitas downloaded before the Decepticons get through to them and tear them to pieces. Verity, however, is more concerned about the size of the computer itself.

A large part of Aequitas is made up of something called a culpability drive, which breaks down factors like motivation and accountability into a streamlined equation so it can do something completely ridiculous: calculate guilt. Yes, someone had the bright idea to break down guilt into a binary system, without any “human” element involved. Because that couldn’t possibly backfire.

Then the narrative catches up to Topspin, and Ironfist and Verity get put on babysitting duty while he deals with his phantom pain. Pyro’s made to help Perceptor with booting up the computer.

Over with Springer, he and Impactor have a little heart-to-heart, while Twin Twist is passed out with a shadow over his face, probably waiting for the horrific reveal of what the dentist’s done to him. Springer feels really bad about Impactor having been sent to Garrus-9; he’d figured that after the trial, Impactor had been sent to rehab, or at least a prison that wasn’t quite as torturey.

Impactor points out that Springer’s testimony at Aequitas was pretty damning, and I’m starting to wonder why Springer didn’t see this coming. Unless they somehow managed to move that massive friggin’ supercomputer in the last few years, Impactor’s trial happened on Garrus-9. Kind of seems like a foregone conclusion that anyone who got put through the Aequitas wringer would end up staying if found guilty.

Impactor still doesn’t think that what he did was wrong, and the only reason they stop verbally duking it out is because Twin Twist does his dramatic face reveal and the dentist comes back in to finish off those fillings.

Funny, they had a similar setup at my old orthodontist’s.

As the dentist prepares to turn what’s left of Twin Twist’s face into the “Lust” scene from Se7en, we get back to the real point of this whole miniseries: fanwanking. Ironfist is telling Verity about the Decepticon’s answer to the Wreckers- Squadron X.

This group is made up entirely of characters who only existed in the Marvel UK comics, and even then only barely. This is convenient on multiple levels; it allows the Wreckers to have an antithesis to their own group that won’t disrupt any of the ongoing storylines outside of Last Stand of the Wreckers. Nobody’s really vying to use the guy who beat up a piano and then got thrown out of a bar, now are they?

It also allows you to use an already-established character that still has plenty of wiggle room for story application. No point in trying to make a new set of characters when we’ve got a bin full of nobodies off in the corner. Especially when we’re only going to have these guys around for a few minutes.

But we’ll get to that later.

Back to Ironfist’s story…

Oh hey Whirl.

Springer’s in a bit of a pickle- his lower half is trapped under a busted barricade, and Squadron X is closing in. Impactor has no intention of leaving Springer behind, so it’s time to get crazy. Springer tells Impactor to blast a hole through his TORSO so he can surprise-attack the approaching enemy. Impactor does so, reluctantly.

Please note that the emphasis is not mine, but the narrative’s.

That’s just a cool panel.

Once all that’s over and done with, Squadron X are all put into inhibitor harnesses to keep them from trying anything funny while in custody. But oh ho, what’s this? They’ve escaped! And they’ve ripped Sandstorm’s arm off! Surely, this must be dealt with, and who better suited for the job than the dude who’s been obsessed with taking these guys out for years now? Impactor gets to work.

And thus the day is saved, thanks to the Wreckers! Yaaay!

With Ironfist’s story concluded, Perceptor takes the time to mention that they’ve got a problem. Turns out Aequitas has some state-of-the-art security measures going on- in order to even turn the thing on, someone’s got to feed the thing their spark. You know, a robot soul. This thing runs on souls, and the donator has to be a willing participant otherwise it won’t work.

Well that’s awful convenient for you, now ain’t it, Percy?

I’m assuming they just never turned the thing off during the trials, otherwise they would have run out of juice very quickly.

So it’s slim pickings in terms of sparks. Perceptor’s playing IT, Topspin’s whole spark situation is a consent minefield, and Verity’s soul is the normal, human, intangible kind. And now we get to the part of our story that’s a little sad.

Pyro and Ironfist aren’t popular. They’ve never been in the spotlight. They aren’t important. They were brought on the Wreckers to die, plain and simple, because it’s a game of numbers, and their numbers are miles below the likes of Springer and Kup.

Pyro isn’t on-board with this at all, saying that this isn’t how it’s supposed to go down for him.

Say what you will about his delusions of grandeur, but this is a guy who knows what he wants.

While Pyro’s dreaming big, Topspin’s having a really bad time in the background. That vicarious perception’s hitting real hard right now.

Ironfist plays the child in a bitter divorce between Pyro and Verity as they argue over who the hell should die so the plot can keep moving. Ironfist has a lot to say, a lot that he really should say, but he doesn’t. He’s not proud of himself, or the things he’s done as a weapons’ expert. After reflecting on his life- a life that hasn’t been profoundly wondrous or meaningful- he concedes to being the one to die.

But that doesn’t happen, because Topspin takes matters into his own hands and puts the goddamn dog to sleep. The dog in this case being himself and Twin Twist. Aequitas thanks him for his donation, sucks out his spark, and over in the torture chamber Twin Twist explodes.

With the twins(?) dead, Aequitas is online, and not a moment too soon, because those Decepticons are starting to bring the door down. Perceptor hands a headphone jack to Ironfist, tells him to plug it into his brain, and to get ready for the hurt, because they’re about to download the entirety of this supercomputer into his head.

Back with Impactor, he’s about to get his cornea scratched, when Guzzle and Kup come to save the day, following Snare’s guidance.

I just want to say, Guzzle wins the Worst Crotch award. It’s simply awful.

So Kup and Guzzle free Springer and Impactor, just in time for Springer to revenge-stab the dentist with the torture stick. Too bad he’s already shot Snare.

Play… makes you free... in the prison that’s been turned into basically a death camp. Is… are we really doing the Holocaust parallels again? God, I hope I’m reading too much into that, I really do.

We finally find out what the prize for winning the Pit fights is: you can either fight Overlord, or kill yourself. Not much of a prize, if you ask me.

Speaking of the Blue Terror, he’s on his way over. Snare asks that Impactor just kill him, because there’s no way he’s going to risk being found out by Overlord that he was being sneaky. Impactor obliges, crushing his brain module between his fingers.

Then Overlord quite literally explodes into the room.

Back over in the Aequitas chamber, Ironfist’s just finished with his upload, and he’s shaken by what he now knows. The Decepticons have nearly broken down the door at this point, and there’s only one way to save themselves- they have to detonate the prisoners’ deterrence chips. This, of course, includes Impactor. Perceptor’s all for it, but Pyro’s wholly against the idea. Verity tries to put in her vote, but humans don’t have rights in the eyes of Wrecker law, so it all comes down to Ironfist.

You heard the man, let’s kill the purple guy.

TES III - Morrowind: Environmental Storytelling at its Finest

You are a new-fangled adventurer, fresh off the ship. Eager to explore the newly-discovered, alien world, you buy some supplies at the town merchant and set off immediately. But on the very outskirts of the harbour town, barely few hundred meters from the last house, something completely unexpected happens. You hear a heart-rending scream, and then, out of thin air, a human being appears some 30 meters above your head. Of course, the laws of gravity apply even on this fantastical world, and the inevitable happens. Next thing you know, the poor person is laying dead in front of you. Who was he? Why did he fall from the sky? Would it be a criminal offense to wear his expensive robes?

For many, including the author of this essay, this was probably the first time they have experienced environmental storytelling. Henry Jenkins says that “environmental storytelling creates the preconditions for an immersive narrative experience in at least one of four ways: spatial stories can evoke pre-existing narrative associations; they can provide a staging ground where narrative events are enacted; they may embed narrative information within their mise-en-scene; or they provide resources for emergent narratives. In other words, this time Bart Stewart’s, it “characterises environmental storytelling as something that “shows the final outcome of a sequence of events, then it invites players to make up their own stories about what happened to cause that outcome”. Which is exactly what happened in the first paragraph.

The game discussed is the third rendition of The Elder Scrolls saga, Morrowind. Released in 2002, it jump-started the popularity of this series. It is also the installment that is universally celebrated by fans of the Elder Scrolls series as the best one so far. The reasons for this can be manifold, but an average fan is most likely not going to mention its ultra-realistic graphics or ground-breaking combat system. Admittedly, compared to other titles in that era of game development, it left a lot to be desired. The game was riddled with bugs, the visuals were slightly outdated even on launch, and the game mechanics were clunky at best. But it did not matter at all, because the game excelled in other aspects, primarily world-building, an attribute closely tied to environmental storytelling. Indeed, without it, it would have never reached its popularity. “Worldbuilding will never save a bad game, but it is an element that elevates good games to something greater”, Josh Bycer says. This is, objectively, the strongest part of the game, and probably of the whole Elder Scrolls series. But it is Morrowind that resonates with the fans of the series the most. Bethesda, the creators of the series, were never fans of hand-holding, and Morrowind shows that. Instead of a modern GPS system with a minimap showing all the quest locations, the player is provided with a written description of their destination, usually with some landmark being mentioned to further narrow the area that the player has to explore in order to arrive at their point of interest. Not only that this makes careful worldbuilding a crucial part of the game, without which the player would not even be able to progress, but it opens door to environmental storytelling.

There is a moment in the game which serves as a great representation of such conjunction. The island of Morrowind, from which the game got its name, is filled with ruins. They were once inhabited by the Dwemer, an ancient race of technically-gifted dwarves. But for some reason, they have all suddenly disappeared, leaving those ruins behind them. Whatever happened, no-one is able to figure it out. The player visits the ruins on many occasions, when questing or exploring. And the latter is sometimes much more rewarding. As seen in the picture, there are two piles of ash on a bed frame, a flask of oil and an elongated “dwemer tube”. Now, a player who does not pay much attention to detail might not even notice this, storming through this location on their way to the next goal. Someone else might just disregard it as clutter and useless rubble. But there are people who will see a story behind this. A story that one might consider to be the very last romance of the now extinct race. Scenaros pertaining to as to what could have happened immediately start racing through the head of this attentive player. Of course, the game can be completed without even stumbling upon the whole dwemer mystery, as the knowledge of what happened to them has no direct impact on the main quest. Besides, it is never directly revealed, the player can only speculate and ultimately decide on what the cause could have been, modifying and creating their own lore. This is exactly what made Bethesda such an accomplished developer. They do not explicitly tell the players what to do, they just provide them with tools necessary to enjoy the vast, open world packed with experiences like this.

Another intriguing subject that the players may discover on their journeys throughout Tamriel (the world of Morrowind) is this seemingly uninteresting pool of water. But upon further inspection, a small information pop-up shows on the screen, informing the player that they have just discovered the Pool of Forgetfulness. The cursor also changes, as with any usable object, but if the player decides to press the interaction key, nothing even happens. Perhaps it was a deliberate decision on the part of the developers. Or they just forgot to code it in. That is still, almost twenty years after the release, a subject of discussion. Some might consider it useless, some will consider it a brilliant addition to already clever world and narrative design of this RPG masterpiece.

As Shepard notes in his article, “If video games shared their entire narrative in dialogue and cutscenes, the medium would be little more than a film with interactive portions.  Games can do a lot of storytelling in their interactive portions, especially through the environment.” And this is doubly true in the genre of open-world role-playing games, with Morrowind being the perfect representative of such. The developers and writers behind the game were fully aware of that and employed environmental storytelling to its fullest potential. Having it in the game gives the player a possibility to expand their experience, unconstrained by its mechanics or predetermined story. In other words, it is the discrepancy between the actual syuzhet and the story itself that leads to an enriched and enhanced playthroughs. This is also similar to what Jenkins tries to explain when talking about embedded narrative. Citing the author himself: “According to this model, narrative comprehension is an active process by which viewers assemble and make hypothesis about likely narrative developments on the basis of information drawn from textual cues and clues” (Jenkins 9). The only limit is, admittedly, the very imagination of the player.

This non-linear openness of the world has been, surprisingly, a kind of a double-sided axe. Most of the reviews back in 2002 were raving about all the different aspects of the game, but only a few of them gave it the absolute top mark. This very excerpt from an IGN article written by Jason Bates describes it well: “Finally, I'll admit Morrowind isn't for everyone. It's a huge, sprawling, megapolis of a game that can take a couple hours just to get into and a hundred hours to complete. In an industry where most games present clear, linear paths guiding you from one pre-defined problem (a jumping puzzle, a monster, or some other dexterity test) to the next, some gamers will find Morrowind's open-endedness unfamiliar, bewildering, even perplexing. They'll sit there, waiting for someone to come along and tell them what to do.”

This is a very fitting description. With Morrowind, environmental storytelling is not only widely used, it is in a way necessary to provide the player with complete enjoyment and immersion. Some people, when given this unrestricted freedom, will feel lost. The fact that the game is now 17 years old can not be omitted either. Using modern standards, it is quite inaccessible for an average, casual player. The responsibility placed on the player when it comes to experiencing the world the way it is meant to be experienced is now something extra, something that requires additional effort. The later installments, Oblivion and Skyrim, are somewhat more streamlined, bearing more resemblance to this roller-coaster type of entertainment where the player sits back and enjoys the ride. But if the player is willing to overcome this small obstacle, they will be rewarded by a fascinating storytelling experience that is still as magical and mysterious as it has been some 17 years ago.

Works Cited

Bates, Jason. “ELDER SCROLLS III: MORROWIND REVIEW.” IGN.com, https://www.ign.com/articles/2002/06/17/elder-scrolls-iii-morrowind-review?page=3. Accessed 29 March 2019

Bycer,Josh. “How Worldbuilding Elevates Video Games and Fandom.” Gamasutra.com, http://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/JoshBycer/20181107/330000/How_Worldbuilding_Elevates_Video_Games_and_Fandom.php. Accessed 29 March 2019

DrunkDunmer. “TES Morrowind: Tarhiel.”, YouTube, 10 Jan. 2008, www.youtube.com/watch?v=N4N2Gdglde0.

Jenkins, Henry. “Game Design as Narrative Architecture.” Georgia Tech University, http://homes.lmc.gatech.edu/~bogost/courses/spring07/lcc3710/readings/jenkins_game-design.pdf. Accessed 29 January 2019

Stewart, Bart. “Environmental Storytelling.” Gamasutra.com, https://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/BartStewart/20151112/259159/Environmental_Storytelling.php. Accessed 28 March 2019.

Visa For China

U.S. residents traveling or residing in China ought to be aware of various levels of scrutiny to which they are going to be subject from Chinese local law enforcement and state security. Apply for a visa extension out of your localEntry/Exit Bureaubefore attempting to depart the nation. Do not expect your request to be expedited, so apply forward of time. Apply for a ten-year multiple entry visa, helpful for repeated travel, or trips to Hong Kong or Macau with returns to China. Starting from the date of your first nucleic test and stay in your departure metropolis and monitor your health for seven days with a personal well being monitoring type. Depending on your state of affairs, essential paperwork can embrace proof of kinship to the invitee in China such as a birth certificates or marriage certificate, and hospital diagnosis paperwork corresponding to an official seal from the hospital or a letter from a doctor. If there isn't a lacking info and the small print you offered are verified as true, another email might be despatched in a couple of days for you to complete. It normally takes four working days for processing a China travel visa. For specific service, an additional fee of USD 20 shall be charged for two or three working day service. For rush service, an additional payment of USD30 shall be charged for same-day service. If you understand a dispute is imminent or a case has already been filed the place you're a party , consider avoiding pointless travel to China. This subject will remain unsettled until a clear assertion of coverage is supplied by immigration authorities. A contrary interpretation of the ambiguous rules is that although the M and F regulations don’t specifically mention internships, they're nonetheless permissible. Buttressing this argument are the 1996 Rules for the Administration of Employment of Foreign Nationals, art. 8 , stating that an internship just isn't work. 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In general, you presumably can't choose from among the designated quarantine motels. U.S. residents can sign up for notifications for Americans touring in China. The university recommends towards all travel to China. Travel to Hong Kong and Taiwan isn't presently restricted but vacationers are advised to take extra precautions whereas touring. S. State Department and Center for Disease Control for updates and adjustments. Saudi Visa For Chinese Language Residents 1.three “Other Consular Institutions” refers to the Consulates, consular places of work and associated establishments of the People's Republic of China. We encourage you to maintain your information up-to-date to facilitate your entry into the United States. EVUS will not require the traveler to submit a photograph or fingerprints. This replace will require the traveler to reply a sequence of questions about himself/herself, and his/her job, background and travel history/destination. Without a resident allow, a overseas employee can not keep in China long term. According to official guidelines, registration on the native police station ought to be done inside 24 hours of coming into China. They can also make use of paperless verification through the application course of. The Class A candidates are also given the leverage to not provide any Diploma or Police Clearance Certificate. In addition to this, solely a Class A work permit allows staff above 60 years old. You might be given a sign of processing time if your software has been put on maintain as a outcome of inadequate supporting documents or pending for extra verification processing. You can now get a Turkey e-visa in under one hundred eighty seconds on Atlys. With Atlys you probably can apply now with out worrying in regards to the utility process. All you want to do is chill out and focus in your journey to Turkey. 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Some are diplomats or assist staff, others are laborers working on infrastructure projects, whereas others are personal entrepreneurs, multinational executives, or vacationers. Chinese migrants have settled in communities across the continent, with South Africa, Angola, Madagascar, Nigeria, and Mauritius among these internet hosting significantly massive Chinese communities. The above rules are solely relevant to itineraries that involve pure worldwide CI/AE working flights. By 14 May 2019, DFA-OCA will concern Apostille Certificates to all documents submitted for authentication. If your public doc is for use in a rustic the place the Apostille Convention doesn't apply, you need to contact the Embassy or Consulate of the nation the place you propose to make use of the doc to have the ability to find out what your options are. This usually means that you need to current your documents to the said country’s Embassy or Consulate in the Philippines for its authentication/legalization. If applicant is not accompanied by adoptive parent/s through the software process, applicant should submit a Special Power of Attorney executed by the adoptive parent/s designating the minor’s companion to help in the software course of. Beijing Pushing For Vaccine Passport For Those Inoculated With Chinese Language Vaccines If a trainer must quarantine and can't educate on-line, we'll find other lecturers to take on their lessons. If a student must quarantine or go away the program, we are able to prepare distant coursework. Students shall be required to fill out a detailed questionnaire to register all journey. Our host universities will comply with the present rules issued by the federal government. 2.The scope of applicants eligible for making use of for a visa out of emergency humanitarian wants will be expanded appropriately. Please fill within the connected Letter of Commitment on COVID-19 Vaccination, sign it by hand and upload it along with the check stories and the vaccination certificate to the “Health Code” applet or the online page. Starting on Monday, Chinese embassies in a number of countries, together with Japan, Israel, Thailand, Pakistan and the Philippines, streamlined visa application procedures in such circumstances. Other nations included in the plan include the United States, Germany, Australia and Greece. Upon entering China, passengers are required to spend 14 days in quarantine at their own expense, which might be monitored by Chinese well being authorities and will happen at a chosen location. China announced on Nov. 4 that it might quickly droop the entry of foreigners from Britain, even if they had visas or legitimate residence permits. It described the transfer as a “temporary response” as instances of Covid-19 surged in Britain. In late September, the government announced that people with expired residence permits may return to China after making use of for a visa. For the past year, individuals trying to go to China have run into a number of the world’s most formidable obstacles to entry. To cease the coronavirus, China bans tourists and short-term enterprise travelers outright, and it sets powerful standards for all different foreigners, even those that have lived there for years. Visa Coverage Of Taiwan This is convenient if you don't live in a metropolis where there is a consulate, or if your situation is more complex, particularly when you apply within China. The fees listed right here only apply to those who apply in their own nation quite than in a 3rd nation. Therefore, for couples the place one partner is of Canadian nationality, the only two U.S. immigration options generally obtainable are the K-1 Fiancé visa and the CR-1/IR-1 Spousal visa . Requesting copies of paperwork from your Alien file (A-File) through a Freedom of Information Act request. If you may have questions concerning the standing of the Form I-407 that you've got got filed with the USCIS Eastern Forms Center, please contact the USCIS Contact Center. Form I-407, Record of Abandonment of Lawful Permanent Resident StatusSubmit your Form I-407 to the USCIS Eastern Forms Center. Unlike these certified for the no-fee Entry Permit or Entry and Exit Permit on arrival, the candidates are required to pay a processing fee of NT$600. In addition, white-collar professionals who've obtained a work permit inside their permitted duration of stay may apply for a piece visa together with their spouse and minors who entered the ROC on the same time. Philippine vacationers will also be required to fill out an arrival card, and provide immigration officers on the port of entry with proof of lodge reservations or an tackle and contact details for the place they are going to be staying in Taiwan. Philippine travelers will now not be eligible for different visa-relaxation measures formally accorded once the visa-free trial is launched on November 1. China visa charges vary enormously based on your nationality, the number of entries required, the nation you might be making use of in, and whether you need an specific service. Generally the price is $140 for an American citizen, and for citizens of other international locations, the payment ranges from $30 to $90.

How Many Presidents Have The Republicans Tried To Impeach

New Post has been published on https://www.patriotsnet.com/how-many-presidents-have-the-republicans-tried-to-impeach/

How Many Presidents Have The Republicans Tried To Impeach

The Trump Administrations Treatment Of Immigration Exclusively As A Criminal And National Security Matter Is Inhumane Impractical And Must End The Bernie Sanders Campaign Wrote As President Bernie Sanders Would Make Undocumented Immigration A Civil Matter And Fundamentally Reform The Government Agencies Tasked With Enforcing Immigration Law In A Way That Views Immigration As A Historically Valued Process Thats Woven Into Our Countrys Fabric

 Hey Bernie — those who are here by less than legal means are breaking the law. That is a criminal matter, not a civil one.

And, for the record, many of the terrorists responsible for the 9/11 attacks on our country had overstayed their visas and were in violation of our immigration laws, thus additionally making it a matter of national security.

But you probably already knew that. You just don’t care.

  Sanders has released an immigration plan that would impose a moratorium on deportations, “break up” existing immigration enforcement agencies, grant full welfare access to non-legal immigrants and welcome a minimum of 50,000 “climate migrants” in the first year of a Sanders administration.

According to Fox News, the plan effectively establishes Sanders at the far left of the immigration debate, as he aims to energize a base that helped drive his 2016 primary campaign amid competition from other liberal candidates in the field this time around.

Bernies Dangerous Open Borders Agenda Would Incentivize Illegal Immigration And Continue The Flow Of Illegal Drugs And Criminals Into Our Country Spokesperson Michael Joyce Said Meanwhile President Trumps Steadfast Leadership On This Issue Has Resulted In A 63 Percent Decline In Illegal Immigrant Apprehensions Since May

Trump has previously indicated that he believes liberal immigration policies from his opponents will help him win in 2020.

When a number of Democrats raised their hands in June to a debate question about whether those not in the country legally should get health care, Trump declared it “the end of that race!”

While most of the Democratic nominees are pushing similar agendas on immigration, Joe Biden has not yet committed to the same level of reform.

Immigration Is Not A Threat To National Security His Plan Says It Is Long Past Time We Break Up The Department Of Homeland Security And Refocus Its Mission On Keeping Our Country Safe And Responding Effectively To Emergencies

Part of his plan disbands both Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Protection . Matters to do with deportation and enforcement would return to the Department of Justice, while customs matters would be sent to the Treasury and naturalization and citizenship to the State Department.

Instead, border enforcement would focus on “stemming the flow of firearms and drugs at ports of entry that have contributed to the opioid epidemic and stopping human trafficking.”

  He would abolish measures such as DNA testing and facial recognition technology for immigration and border enforcement.

For those immigrants, legal or not, who are in the country, Sanders accelerates the call to include ALL in welfare programs and other government services such as health care. Under Sanders, everything is on the table for everyone in the country regardless of immigration status.

The things that Sanders wants to offer independent of immigration status: Medicare-for-all, College-for-all and free universal school meals .

Sanders is also pushing for Congress to pass Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s Embrace Act, which opens all welfare programs to all immigrants, legal or not.

  Sanders also wants to streamline legal immigration channels, reduce fees, and provide funding to unite immigrants who are stuck in backlogs.

The Republican National Committee on Thursday called the plan “dangerous.”

Devin Nunes Says Gop Majority In The House After 2022 Midterms Could Spell Trouble For New President As Fringe Conservatives Seek Retribution

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Related video: Sean Hannity attacks Trump’s ‘lacklustre, meandering’ impeachment defence

Republicans could face significant pressure to impeach Joe Biden should they win back a majority in the House of Representatives in the 2022 midterm elections, California congressman Devin Nunes has warned.

Speaking to Fox News anchor Sean Hannity on Wednesday night, the Donald Trump loyalist suggested the GOP’s right-wing fringe could use any newfound power in Congress to push for a revenge impeachment against President Biden after his predecessor became the first commander-in-chief in American history to be impeached twice by the House.

“Republicans have a good chance of taking the House in 2022,” Mr Nunes said. “Now, if that happens, and let’s – for example, we don’t know what’s gonna happen to Hunter Biden’s laptop. We don’t know what’s gonna happen with the Durham investigation . But I could see the pressure would become great for us to actually have to impeach Biden.”

“Now look, I don’t want to do that, but you’re going to have people that are going to be saying that,” he added.

His allusion to the computer owned by the president’s son refers to a pre-election story popular among Trump supporters concerning the device being handed over by the owner of a Delaware repair shop to prominent Republican lawyer Rudy Giuliani. 

Interesting Fact Did You Know Democrats Have Tried To Impeach Every Republican President Since Eisenhower

The site had made the proclamation that the information delivered from the meme shared online was “Mostly False”, but when reading the rationale behind why they made such a claim revealed aspects that erred toward being more truthful. The Snopes article read:

What’s True

Articles of impeachment were introduced against five of the six Republican presidents who have served since President Dwight D. Eisenhower. 

What’s False

Articles of impeachment were not introduced against President Gerald Ford; a handful of Democratic politicians filed articles of impeachment against President George H. W. Bush Sr. and President RonaldReagan but their efforts did not receive the backing of the entire Democratic party; and the impeachment efforts against President Richard Nixon received bipartisan support.

So, the infamous debunking website had claimed that this was a mostly false statement since that only five of the six Republican presidents had articles of impeachment brought towards them while in office.

Yet, the real kicker is that they failed to mention that Gerald Ford wasn’t even an elected president and had only stayed in office for slightly over two years.

The circumstances of Ford’s appointment were stemming from the Nixon’s fall from grace and his original vice president resigning over the disgrace of the Watergate scandal. With all the country had been through at that point, impeachment on the appointed president Ford would have been insufferable.

My Father Came To America As A Refugee Without A Nickel In His Pocket To Escape Widespread Anti

Sanders’ plan was written in conjunction with several immigrants who were shielded from deportation by former President Barack Obama’s Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program.

  In the plan, he promises to extend legal status to those eligible under the DACA program, as well as to grant relief for their parents. He also promises to use executive authority to allow immigrants who have violated our laws by living in the U.S. for five or more years to stay “free from threat of deportation.”

Sanders wants to provide a “pathway to citizenship” via Congress for all undocumented immigrants living in America — which he says is currently around 11 million — and would ensure that “old or low-level contacts with the criminal justice system” do not prevent illegal immigrants from walking along that path.

As president, Sanders says he would also decriminalize illegal border crossings, instead making it a civil violation. He would also end detention for those without a violent crime conviction.

Upon being sworn in, a President Sanders would halt all deportations until there was a full audit of “current and past practices and policies.”

He would also end the Trump ‘Muslim travel ban,’ as well as other Trump policies such as the Migrant Protection Protocols and defunding of sanctuary cities.

They are called public defenders. 

  You mean, like the corruption, repression and poverty in Venezuela, caused by the very socialism he wants to bring to America?

Did You Know That Democrats Have Tried To Impeach Every Elected Republican President Since 1960

Threat title:Did You Know That Democrats Have Tried to Impeach EVERY Elected Republican President since 1960?Of course there was no Republican POTUS elected in 1960, because Kennedy was elected. Nor was there one in 1964 when LBJ was elected. 1968 did see a Republican POTUS when Nixon squeaked in, but no impeachment was introduced against him until after the 1972 re-election. And when it was, it was supported from every side. So here already the OP has padded his specious claim by twelve years. And counting. 1976, no Republican, Jimmy Carter elected. Finally in 1980 and 1984, Reagan the Republican elected and re-elected and Henry Gonzalez filed impeachment articles that went nowhere. OP has padded his dates by 27 years. In 1988 HW Bush was elected, Gonzalez again files article, again goes nowhere. 1992 and 1996 was Clinton, who did face impeachment but ruh-roh, he’s not a Republican. So apparently, somebody filed articles against Dubya.The Cliff’s Notes to cut the bullshit.SFX: sound of emptying balloon

“The most incomprehensible thing about the universe is that it is comprehensible”– Albert Einstein

Gop Sen Collins: Trump Incited An Insurrection To Prevent Peaceful Transfer Of Authority

From CNN’s Clare Foran

GOP Sen. Susan Collins, who was among the Republicans who voted to convict former President Trump, spoke on the Senate floor explaining her vote, saying Trump “incited an insurrection with the purpose of preventing that transfer of power from occurring.”

“Instead of preventing a dangerous situation, President Trump created one. Rather than defend the Constitutional transfer of power, he incited an insurrection with the purpose of preventing that transfer of power from occurring,” she said.

Collins said that Trump’s “actions to interfere with the peaceful transition of power – the hallmark of our Constitution and our American democracy – were an abuse of power and constitute grounds for conviction.”

“The record is clear that the President, President Trump abused his power, violated his oath to uphold the Constitution and tried almost every means in his power to prevent the peaceful transfer of authority to the newly elected President,” she said.

“My vote in this trial stems from my own oath and duty to defend the Constitution of the United States. The abuse of power and betrayal of his oath by President Trump meet the Constitutional standard of high crimes and misdemeanors and for those reasons, I voted to convict,” she said.

Most Senate Republicans Back Measure Saying Trump Impeachment Trial Is Unconstitutional

Dareh Gregorian

Senate Republicans voted Tuesday for a measure that would have declared the impeachment proceedings against former President Donald Trump unconstitutional because he is no longer in office.

The motion, by Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., was defeated by a vote of 55-45, showing that Democrats have an uphill climb to secure the 67 votes needed for a conviction. Among those who voted for the motion was Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., who has said he is undecided whether to convict Trump and who worked on the trial calendar with Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y.

McConnell, when he was majority leader, rebuffed Democrats’ efforts to hold the trial while Trump was in office.

Senators were sworn for Trump’s second impeachment trial earlier Tuesday, a day after House impeachment managers delivered to the Senate the article of impeachment accusing Trump of incitement of insurrection in the Capitol riot this month.

The senators were given the oath by Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., the president pro tempore of the Democratic-controlled Senate.

“Do you solemnly swear that in all things appertaining to the trial of Donald John Trump, former president of the United States, now pending, you will do impartial justice according to the Constitution and the laws, so help you God?” Leahy asked the assembled senators.

Leahy is presiding over the trial instead of Chief Justice John Roberts because Trump is a former president.

Stacey Plaskett Addresses Emotional Toll Of Seeing Black Women Used In Trump Defense

“Those 43 who voted to acquit the president did so because they were afraid of him, because they were more interested in party and in power than they were in our country and in duty to their Senate oath,” she added.

Plaskett said Trump “will be forever tarnished” by the impeachment.

“I think it leaves him for all history — our children and my grandchildren will see in history that this was the most despicable despot attempting to become a fascist ruler over a country that was founded in democracy,” she said.

President Biden said the attack on the Capitol “has reminded us that democracy is fragile.” Above, Biden speaks during a visit Thursday to the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Md. Evan Vucci/APhide caption

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President Biden said the attack on the Capitol “has reminded us that democracy is fragile.” Above, Biden speaks during a visit Thursday to the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Md.

President Biden responded to the Senate’s acquittal of Donald Trump on Saturday by reminding Americans that truth must be defended, saying the impeachment of the former president was a stark illustration of the danger posed to democracy by lies, misinformation and extremism.

And Biden said that although Trump was acquitted, his actions in the lead-up to the Jan. 6 insurrection were not “in dispute.”

New Report Suggests Most Scholars Are On The Other Side; Trial Could Start This Week

WASHINGTON—The political fate of President Trump, and any ambitions he might have for reclaiming the White House in 2024, could be settled by who wins a debate over whether a president can be convicted through the impeachment process after leaving office—a matter on which the U.S. Constitution is silent.

The House impeached Mr. Trump last Wednesday for “high crimes and misdemeanors” for conduct culminating with a speech exhorting thousands of his followers to march down Pennsylvania Avenue to the Capitol and “fight like hell” against congressional certification of President-elect Joe Biden’s Electoral College victory.

“Thus incited by President Trump, members of the crowd he had addressed…unlawfully breached and vandalized the Capitol, injured and killed law enforcement personnel, menaced Members of Congress, the Vice President, and Congressional personnel, and engaged in other violent, deadly, destructive, and seditious acts,” the impeachment resolution, which won support from 10 Republicans, alleges.

The Senate could take the next steps—trying Mr. Trump and voting on his guilt—as soon as this week. Conviction requires a two-thirds vote by senators present; assuming perfect attendance, 17 Republicans would need to join all 50 Democrats to find Mr. Trump guilty.

Trump Lawyer: His Call To Georgia Officials To ‘find’ Votes Was Taken Out Of Context

Trump’s lawyers largely sidestepped Trump’s false claims of election fraud. Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., asked during the question-and-answer session: “Are the prosecutors right when they claim that Trump was telling a big lie, or in your judgment did Trump actually win the election?”

Trump lawyer Michael van der Veen shot back, “My judgment? Who asked that?”

“I did,” Sanders replied.

“My judgment is irrelevant,” van der Veen said.

“You represent the president of the United States!” Sanders yelled back before Sen. Patrick Leahy, the presiding officer, gaveled the chamber back to order.

Trump’s rhetoric about widespread fraud and a stolen election was false, dismissed by many courts stemming from dozens of lawsuits filed by the Trump campaign and allies across several key states.

After Speaking Out On Impeachment Herrera Beutler Heads Toward Clash With Her Party

“The people who stormed this building believed they were acting on the wishes and instructions of their president,” he said, “and having that belief was a foreseeable consequence of the growing crescendo of false statements, conspiracy theories and reckless hyperbole which the defeated president kept shouting into the largest megaphone on planet Earth.”

McConnell rebuked Trump for his actions after the insurrection as well.

“He did not do his job. He didn’t take steps so federal law could be faithfully executed and order restored,” he continued.

“No. Instead, according to public reports, he watched television happily — happily — as the chaos unfolded,” he said. “Even after it was clear to any reasonable observer that Vice President Pence was in serious danger.”

But McConnell said that the process of impeachment and conviction is a “limited tool” and that he believes Trump is not “constitutionally eligible for conviction.”

“The Constitution gives us a particular role. This body is not invited to act as the nation’s overarching moral tribunal,” he said.

He said that the text of the question of constitutionality is “legitimately ambiguous” and that he “respects” his colleagues for reaching either the conclusion to acquit or convict.

Seven Republicans broke ranks with their party in voting for a conviction.

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Michael van der Veen, defense lawyer for former President Donald Trump, gives closing arguments during Trump’s second impeachment trial on February 13, 2021.

Trump’s Defense Closes Its Case By Saying Impeachment Trial Is A ‘complete Charade’

Manager Rep. Joe Neguse of Colorado rebutted the defense’s argument that Trump has been denied due process.

“We had a full presentation of evidence, adversarial presentations, motions. The president was invited to testify. He declined. The president was invited to provide exculpatory evidence. He declined. You can’t claim there’s no due process when you won’t participate in the process,” he said.

He noted that impeachment is separate and distinct from the criminal justice system.

“Why would the constitution include the impeachment power at all, if the criminal justice system serves as a suitable alternative once a President leaves office?” he asked. “It wouldn’t.”

Neguse also sought to address an allegation raised by defense attorneys, that the impeachment trial was rooted in hate. He turned to a quote from Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.: “I have decided to stick with love. Hate is too great a burden to bear.”

“This trial is not born from hatred,” said Neguse. “Far from it. It’s born from love of country. Our country. Our desire to maintain it. Our desire to see America at its best.”

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On Saturday morning, senators voted to hear from Republican Rep. Jaime Herrera Beutler as a witness in the impeachment trial. Later, an agreement allowed a statement by her into the record without calling her.

The Senate impeachment trial of former President Donald Trump won’t be hearing from witnesses after all.

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If Convicted Removal From Office Possible Disqualification From Government Service

If a president is acquitted by the Senate, the impeachment trial is over. But if he or she is found guilty, the Senate trial moves to the sentencing or “punishment” phase. The Constitution allows for two types of punishments for a president found guilty of an impeachable offense: “Judgment in Cases of Impeachment shall not extend further than to removal from Office, and disqualification to hold and enjoy any Office of honor, Trust or Profit under the United States.”

The first punishment, removal from office, is automatically enforced following a two-thirds guilty vote. But the second punishment, disqualification from holding any future government position, requires a separate Senate vote. In this case, only a simple majority is required to ban the impeached president from any future government office for life. That second vote has never been held since no president has been found guilty in the Senate trial.

Trump Lawyer: His Call To Georgia Officials To Find Votes Was Taken Out Of Context

Trump’s lawyers largely sidestepped Trump’s false claims of election fraud. Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., asked during the question-and-answer session: “Are the prosecutors right when they claim that Trump was telling a big lie, or in your judgment did Trump actually win the election?”

Trump lawyer Michael van der Veen shot back, “My judgment? Who asked that?”

“I did,” Sanders replied.

“My judgment is irrelevant,” van der Veen said.

“You represent the president of the United States!” Sanders yelled back before Sen. Patrick Leahy, the presiding officer, gaveled the chamber back to order.

Trump’s rhetoric about widespread fraud and a stolen election was false, dismissed by many courts stemming from dozens of lawsuits filed by the Trump campaign and allies across several key states.

Mcconnell: Trump Is Practically And Morally Responsible For Provoking Capitol Riot

From CNN’s Adrienne Vogt

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell called the Jan. 6 Capitol attack a “disgrace.” 

“They did this because they had been fed wild falsehoods by the most powerful man on Earth. Because he was angry. He had lost an election. Former President Trump’s actions preceded the riot were a disgraceful, disgraceful dereliction of duty,” McConnell said.

“There’s no question — none — that President Trump is practically and morally responsible for provoking the events of the day. No question about it. The people who stormed this building believed they were acting on the wishes and instructions of their President,” he added.

McConnell said there were “wild myths” about election fraud, but he said he defended Trump’s right to bring any complaints to the legal system.

“As I stood up and said clearly at that time, the election was settled. It was over. But that just really opened a new chapter of even wilder, wilder and more unfounded claims,” he said. “The leader of the free world cannot spend weeks thundering that shadowy forces are stealing our country and then feign surprise when people believe him and do reckless things.”

Trump “did not do his job” to end the Jan. 6 violence, McConnell said.

McConnell called the Trump defense team invoking Trump’s voters during the impeachment trial “as a human shield against criticism.”

Watch:

Democrats Use Video Of Capitol Attack To Remind Senators Of Purpose Of Impeachment

Senators were brought back to the day of the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol when Tuesday’s Senate trial opened with a 13-minute video containing clips from that day, from the president’s exhortation at a rally near the White House that his followers should go to the Capitol to the ensuing attack.

The video included footage of rioters breaking windows and chanting “stop the steal” as they disrupted the process to certify the 2020 presidential election results, falsely believing Trump’s claims that President Joe Biden won due to widespread fraud.

Members of Congress were shown in the video being escorted out. One clip showed the moment a Capitol Police officer shot Ashli Babbitt, the 35-year-old woman who had joined the rioters trying to get into the House chamber.

The clips were followed by Trump’s words on social media, directing the rioters to “go home with love and in peace.”

“Senators, the president was impeached by the U.S. House of Representatives on Jan. 13 for doing that. You ask what a high crime and misdemeanor is under our Constitution? That is a high crime and misdemeanor. If that’s not an impeachable offense, then there is no such thing,” said House impeachment prosecutor Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md.

“They don’t need to show you movies to show you that the riot happened here. We will stipulate that it happened, and you know all about it,” he said.

Stacey Plaskett: Trump Trial Needed ‘more Senators With Spines Not More Witnesses’

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., and West Virginia GOP Sen. Shelley Moore Capito both cited constitutional concerns in their decision to vote to acquit Trump.

Virgin Islands House Del. Stacey Plaskett, another impeachment manager, told NPR’s Weekend Edition that they didn’t “reverse course” on witnesses but instead succeeded in adding Herrera Beutler’s statement describing a conversation between House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy and Trump as the attack was ongoing.

“I know that people have a lot of angst and they can’t believe that the Senate did what they did . But what we needed were senators, more senators with spines, not more witnesses,” Plaskett said.

Sen. Chris Coons, D-Del., a close ally of President Biden, reportedly urged House managers to relent on witnesses. He told ABC’s This Week on Sunday that spending “months fighting over witnesses” wouldn’t have been worth it.

“What the House managers needed wasn’t more witnesses or more evidence, what we all needed was more Republican courage,” he said. “This was the most bipartisan verdict in American history, a strong rebuke to President Trump, but frankly at the end of the day, the trial had reached its natural conclusion.”

Seven Republican senators voted to convict Trump, after 10 GOP House members voted to impeach Trump for inciting the mob that breached the U.S. Capitol.

Republican Who Wanted To Destroy Bill Clinton During 1998 Impeachment Has Regrets

A former Republican congressman who led the charge to impeach Bill Clinton in 1998 said he paid a visit to the former Democratic president a few years ago to ask forgiveness for his role in the affair.

“I hated Bill Clinton, wanted to destroy him, asked to be on Judiciary Committee so that I could impeach him,” said Bob Inglis, R-S.C., in an interview on “The Long Game,” a Yahoo News podcast.

Inglis visited Clinton a few years ago at the former president’s office in Harlem, he said, in what he described as a “very interesting” meeting. Inglis informed Clinton that he joined the Judiciary Committee as soon as he was elected to Congress in 1992, the same year Clinton was elected president, with the intent of impeaching him.

“I hated you so much that I wanted to impeach you,” Inglis told Clinton.

Clinton “sort of flinched,” Inglis said. “I said, ‘Yeah, I know you hadn’t done anything yet, but so much did I hate you.”

“I told him that it wasn’t good for my soul, it wasn’t good for the country, for me to have that level of animosity toward him,” Inglis said. “He didn’t say the words that you would hope to hear, which is, ‘You’re forgiven.’ But in every way he has expressed that to me. He’s been very kind to accept the apology for sure.”

Inglis left his seat in Congress in 1998, the same year the Republican-controlled House impeached Clinton, to run for the U.S. Senate. He narrowly lost to Democratic incumbent Sen. Fritz Hollings, who had held the seat since 1966.

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What is Meant by a Family of Trademarks?

Trademarks are distinctive marks, symbols, or labels used to differentiate goods belonging to one entity from that of another to avoid deception concerning the origin of those goods or services. These intangible assets are often used in collaboration with other marks by the formation of a trademark portfolio, which consists of marks sharing a few characteristics and belonging to one entity. In the Bainbridge judgment (2006), the court, in reference to a family of marks, said that “they reproduce in full the same distinctive element with the addition of an element, graphic, or word, which differentiates them from each other or when characterized by the repetition of a single prefix or suffix taken from an original mark.”

The doctrine of the family of marks is simply a common law extension of the Trademark Law that not only prohibits registration of similar marks, which is likely to create confusion, but also those marks that are similar to a pre-existing group of marks from which the proprietor of the group derives market utility since the market recognizes the collective uniqueness of the entire group.

Characteristics of a Family of Trademarks

A family of trademarks is generally identified by the common use of a syllable(s), which may be prefixed or suffixed. In addition to this, a family of trademarks is a congregation of trademarks that has the following features:

A recognizable common characteristic(s);

Distinctive in nature; and

Brought into commerce since the purchasing audience recognizes the common features of the many marks and contemplates that the goods or services originate from a common trademark owner.

Therefore, the adoption of a series of marks to commercially market goods and services would not suffice the creation of a family of marks. The purchasing audience must recognize the shared characteristics indicating a common origin. The same is majorly influenced by the mode of use, nature of advertising, and inherent nature contributing to the inherent distinctiveness of the mark owing to its common characteristics.

The issue of the distinctiveness of a family of trademarks was brought forth in the case of Pure & Simple Concepts, Inc. v. I H W Management Limited DBA The Finchley Group. Here the applicant was seeking to register ‘Blue Industry,’ which was opposed by the opposition on account of it causing a likelihood of confusion with a family of its ‘Industry’ marks used for the same nature of goods as the applicant, i.e., clothing. The Trademark Trial and Appeal Board decided against the opposer since the use of ‘Industry’ did not reflect a secondary meaning. It was submitted that 74 third-party registrations were existent, and the consumers did not associate with the brand as a household name. Therefore, all the previously mentioned characteristics should be satisfied to acclaim a series of marks being formative of the family of trademarks.

Popular Examples of Family of Trademarks

One of the most well-established and popular trademark families known across all age groups alike is the McDonald’s mark, as also recognized by the EU Court in 2016. The court acknowledged the existence of the family of marks characterized by the use of the prefix ‘Mc’ alongside the name of the food products like McFish, McToast, McMuffin, McCurry, McChicken, McFeast, etc.

Another well-cited trademark is Apple, where it uses its distinctive ‘i’ prefix with its cellular and other electronic devices like iPhone, iPad, iPod, etc.

Toys “R”Us also owns a family of trademarks, which is inclusive of Babies”R”Us, Rewards”R”Us, and the “R”Us Credit Card. The feature setting it apart while holding the identity together is not a suffix or a prefix, but a word conjoining two different words, i.e., “R.” Therefore, a family of trademarks should have a common recognizable feature.

However, creating a trademark family requires greater deliberation and decision-making since it is imperative to depict a secondary meaning of the said marks. A group of loosely associated marks cannot be said to be contributing to a family of marks. Consider, for example, the instance of Little Caesars’ Pizza, which was denied registration of its mark ‘Deep! Deep! Dish Pizza.’ Little Caesar argued that the mark signifies a family of double-worded trademarks, just like its famous ‘Pizza! Pizza!’ trademark. However, the same was rejected by the US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) on the ground that ‘Deep! Deep! Dish Pizza’ is not a distinctive mark; instead, it is a descriptive mark that lacks a common characteristic shared with the existent ‘Pizza! Pizza!’ mark. In the given case, the previously mentioned mark could have been registered if it would have gained secondary meaning by acquiring distinctiveness amongst the masses; however, it still wouldn’t have qualified as a constitutive element of the family of trademarks since it had no connecting feature to the main brand.

Benefit of Establishing a Family of Trademarks

The logic behind streamlining efforts and investing capital in the creation of a family of marks is that it helps strengthen the original brand name, as is said, “The more, the merrier.” With every other launch of the Apple product using the prefix ‘i,’ the core value of Apple increases significantly. It not only helps establish the brand value but also alerts potential infringers against trespassing of such rights since these products gain such renowned status that cannot be ignored. Furthermore, more marks mean better recognition and increased distinctiveness.

Therefore, every new introduction to the trademark family would not face major difficulty in establishing market presence due to inter-relation created by common characteristics of the marks. It helps in the proliferation of the identity of the brand in general and aids in further expansion of business endeavors. An example of this is the use of Reliance by the Ambani group, which has delved into different sectors extending into footwear by using Reliance Footprints, a clothing line by using Reliance Trends, jewelry by deploying Reliance Jewels, etc. The business sectors may be different, but they are all united by a common logo utilizing the ‘R’ alphabet and a shadow of the flame.

Using Family of Trademarks from a Strategic Point-of-View

The Doctrine of Family of Marks Can be Used Where:The Doctrine of Family of Marks Cannot be Used Where:An applicant wishes to strengthen his or her claims that the mark applied for has acquired distinctiveness as a new member of a well-recognized family of marks.Some third party is a prior registrant of a trademark, which the proprietor of a family of trademark (applicant) wishes to use. In this case, the applicant cannot assert the family of marks as a valid reason to obtain registration over the prior registrant of rights. Here, the family of marks would be irrelevant to the issue.A plaintiff, in a cancellation or opposition proceeding, wishes to assert that the defendant’s use of his or her mark is likely to be confused with the plaintiff’s family of marks.

It becomes easier to entrap the defendant by citing either of the plaintiff’s marks in separation or through collective mention.

The family of trademarks was used as an argument to successfully defend the ‘Mc’ mark in favor of McDonald’s in the case of McDonald’s Corp. v. McBagels Inc. In this case, the court prevented McBagels Inc. from using the word ‘McBagels’ in connection with their bakery and restaurant even though ‘Mc’ is a common surname. McDonald’s prevailed against McBagels since its items such as ‘Egg McMuffin,’ ‘McChicken,’ ‘Big Mac,’ and ‘Mac Fries’ gathered secondary meaning due to international advertising.

Element of Risk while Using the Doctrine

A major risk of confusion may arise upon the proprietor of the family of trademarks where a mark may be used by a third party to associate with the family in bad faith. In such an instance, there is a possibility of the consumer to believe that the mark being used in bad faith has originated or forms a part of the said family. It may introduce a detriment to all the marks being deployed as a part of the trademark family and tarnish their respective image while the third party freely rides upon the reputation created by the bonafide proprietor.

The same was visible in the EU Court case T-518/13, which acknowledged that the trademark MacCoffee did not belong to the proprietor of McDonald’s; however, it drew a close association with the ‘Mc’ family of marks. It was established that since the two prefixes ‘Mc’ and ‘Mac’ were phonetically and visually very similar to one another and dealt with food-related products, it was difficult to differentiate between the two categories of marks. Therefore, it is crucial to remain aware of such notorious brands willing to associate with the family of trademarks.

Conclusion

Although the birth of this doctrine was incidental, it has viably grown and provided greater protection within the sphere of Intellectual Property (IP) laws. It has been often contended that this doctrine has benefitted the already established and dominating actors in the market like Apple and McDonald’s, while smaller enterprises have not gained much from it as they are usually thrown off from directly competing against the prior mentioned actors. Keeping such debate aside, the spirit of this doctrine can be deployed to promote a company by strategically deploying marks in consonance with the company’s development goals and marketing ambitions to secure better outcomes. ✅ For more visit: https://www.kashishipr.com/

An Australia With No Google? The Bitter Struggle Behind a Drastic Menace SYDNEY, Australia — In a serious escalation, Google threatened on Friday to make its search engine unavailable in Australia if the federal government accredited laws that may drive tech firms to pay for journalism shared on their platforms. Fb, which appeared with Google at an Australian Senate listening to, reaffirmed a risk of its personal, vowing to dam customers in Australia from posting or sharing hyperlinks to information if the invoice handed. In each circumstances, the dire warnings — which one senator referred to as blackmail — revealed the obvious willingness of Fb and Google to cover or erase dependable sources of knowledge for thousands and thousands of individuals at a time when social media platforms are underneath hearth for serving to misinformation unfold worldwide. The businesses argue that they already assist the media trade by sending it visitors, and that the invoice would open them as much as “unmanageable ranges of monetary and operational danger.” The response by Google, which controls 95 p.c of all queries in Australia along with proudly owning YouTube, has grown significantly aggressive: The corporate not too long ago buried main Australian information websites in search ends in what it referred to as an “experiment.” However the precedent of paying for journalism doesn’t, in itself, appear to be the difficulty. A couple of hours earlier than Google threatened to remove its search engine in Australia, the corporate agreed to pay information publications in France underneath an settlement that’s more likely to result in extra offers throughout Europe. The battle in Australia facilities on energy: who will get to resolve the funds, what prompts a cost for the tech firms and when have they got to disclose adjustments of their algorithms. Australia’s assertive problem to the social media giants has positioned it within the vanguard of a motion to bolster a conventional information media ecosystem that America’s trillion-dollar tech firms threaten with extinction. For Google and Fb, their intense pushback has turn into a focus of their world efforts to restrict regulation, as governments around the globe look to rein them in. Right here’s a abstract of the combat. Speedy vs. Extended Negotiations Below Australia’s proposed laws, if media firms and platforms like Google can’t agree on a worth for information content material, an unbiased arbitration physique will resolve the dispute. That would quantity to a primary on this planet. The settlement in France lets Google negotiate with publishers utilizing standards the corporate has established, such because the contribution to basic dialogue, publication quantity and viewers measurement. Disputes would probably go to court docket, the place they might be slowed down for years, delaying cost. Australia’s invoice would streamline the method and strengthen the weaker facet — the media. As Rod Sims, the chairman of Australia’s shopper safety regulator, defined: “The intention of the code is to handle the uneven bargaining place between Australian information media companies and the massive digital platforms who’ve clear market energy.” The tech firms say it might create an incentive for media firms to jack up costs, sending circumstances to an arbiter who will decide ultimate cost. They level to a authorities report estimating that 75 p.c of the negotiations might find yourself with arbitrators. Critics argue that Google and Fb are merely attempting to keep up their place as those who get to find out what information is price. “It’s concerning the exterior course of being imposed on them by laws, moderately than by them simply having the ability to dole out offers as they see match,” mentioned Peter Lewis, director of the Middle for Accountable Know-how on the Australia Institute, an unbiased analysis group. “It shifts the steadiness of energy from their arms to a 3rd social gathering, and that’s what they’ll’t countenance.” Hyperlinks vs. Previews The combat facilities partly on a debate over the character of search outcomes, and on the query of whether or not tech firms ought to pay for each article that Australians see on their platforms. Enterprise & Financial system Up to date  Jan. 21, 2021, 4:40 p.m. ET In a submission to Australia’s Senate inquiry concerning the proposal, Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the World Broad Net, wrote that “the code dangers breaching a basic precept of the net by requiring cost for linking between sure content material on-line.” “The power to hyperlink freely,” he added, “that means with out limitations concerning the content material of the linked website and with out financial charges, is key to how the net operates.” Melanie Silva, the managing director of Google Australia and New Zealand, made the identical argument on Friday within the Senate and in a video posted to Twitter, the place she requested folks to think about recommending just a few cafes to a pal — after which getting a invoice from the cafes for sharing that info. “If you put a worth on linking to sure info, you break the way in which search engines like google and yahoo work,” she mentioned. “And also you not have a free and open internet.” Google and Fb (together with Twitter and others), nevertheless, don’t merely hyperlink. They body the work in previews, with headlines, summaries and images, after which curate and serve up the content material whereas sprinkling in ads. Tama Leaver, a professor of web research at Curtin College in Perth, famous in a latest essay that this added worth lessens the probability of somebody clicking into the article, hurting media firms whereas enhancing the tech firms’ backside line. “It’s usually in that reframing that ads seem, and that is the place these platforms earn cash,” he wrote. He added that the code might be adjusted to cost the businesses solely after they create previews, not simply hyperlinks. However Mr. Sims, the primary architect of the code, mentioned on Friday within the Senate that Google and Mr. Berners-Lee had been merely incorrect on the main points. “The code doesn’t require Google and Fb to pay for linking information content material,” he mentioned. “Certainly, discussions we’re conscious of have targeted on paying upfront lump sum quantities, not per click on.” Extra broadly, lawmakers and public coverage consultants have argued that the businesses don’t simply share info like a pal. They harvest particulars about their customers so as to make what they share worthwhile. As Mr. Lewis on the Australia Institute put it, they don’t simply offer you details about the place to get espresso — they observe you to the cafe, watch what you order and the place you go subsequent, then promote that data to firms that wish to market you one thing else. Senator Rex Patrick accused Google of pretending to be involved about “technical priority.” In truth, he mentioned, it’s all about “industrial priority” — cash. Google Australia collected roughly $3.3 billion from Australian advertisers in 2019, and paid about $77 million in taxes, with a reported revenue of about $637 million. Secret Algorithms vs. Transparency One probably groundbreaking aspect of the proposed laws includes the key sauce of Fb, Google and subsidiaries like YouTube: the algorithms that decide what folks see after they search or scroll by means of the platforms. Early drafts of the invoice would have required that tech firms give their information media companions 28 days’ discover earlier than making any adjustments that may have an effect on how customers work together with their content material. Google and Fb mentioned that may be inconceivable as a result of their algorithms are at all times altering in methods that may be troublesome to measure for a subset like information, so within the newest draft, lawmakers restricted the scope. If the invoice passes in a single type or one other, which appears probably, the digital platforms must give the media 14 days’ discover of deliberate algorithm adjustments that considerably have an effect on their companies. Even that, some critics argue, will not be sufficient for Massive Tech. “I feel Google and Fb are significantly apprehensive that different nations will take part Australia’s effort,” mentioned Johan Lidberg, a professor of media at Monash College in Melbourne. “This might ultimately trigger substantial income losses globally and critical lack of management, exemplified by the algorithm situation.” However, he added, utilizing threats to bully lawmakers won’t do them any good. “Google’s overreaction completely illustrates why the code is required,” he mentioned, “and past that, the dire want for all governments, throughout the globe, to hitch in efforts in reining in and limiting the ability of those firms that’s utterly out of hand.” Supply hyperlink #Australia #bitter #Drastic #Fight #Google #threat

How to Boost ROI with Optimized Buy Now Buttons

E-commerce has become a cutthroat industry.

With everyone and their brother-in-law setting up e-commerce businesses and the competition is super stiff. 

That’s why you must do everything in your power to position yourself for more sales.

One way to do that is to optimize your Buy Now buttons.

What is a Buy Now Button, and Why is Optimization Important?

Cart abandonment costs businesses $4.6 trillion globally. Research shows that two of the top reasons shoppers abandon carts are:

28% say it’s because of being forced to create an account

21% say it’s due to a long (or complicated) checkout process

Optimized buy now buttons can help streamline this process for users by kicking off a simpler checkout process. In its simplest form, a Buy Now button is a link or actual CTA button that, once clicked on, takes shoppers directly to a:

Product page: this works best if you’re promoting a new product and want prospects to see some social proof before buying.

Cart: Looking to increase your average order value (AOV)? Then link your Buy Now button to the shopping cart and encourage buyers to meet the deal or shipping threshold you’ve set. 

Checkout page: This works best for products you’re promoting with urgency/scarcity, like a flash sale. 

The advantages of Buy Now buttons are that they reduce cart abandonment rates and increase sales. 

Here’s a typical example from the e-commerce giant, Amazon:

 4 Ways to The Buy Now Button for E-Commerce Can Help Increase Your Revenue

Let me show you four simple, yet powerful reasons why Buy Now buttons can make a huge difference in your bottom line:

Generate Demand 

Demand generation is an important aspect of increasing online sales. A well-optimized Buy Now button is a great way to generate demand across multiple online platforms. 

Speed Up the Checkout Process

Buy Now buttons bypass most steps and protocols shoppers have to go through to make a purchase, thereby helping customers make purchases faster.

Skip Account Creation

Not everyone who buys from your store wants to create an account. A Buy Now button makes it easy for shoppers to purchase products on your store as guests from any platform they see your product on. 

Improve User Experience (UX)

With a Buy Now button, you can sell to your customers from any website or platform (like social media) that supports the Buy Now button function. This drastically improves your UX, as customers can make a purchase on the same site in seconds.

Buy Now buttons make life easier for both you and your customers.

Where Can You Use Buy Now Buttons?

One of the biggest advantages of Buy Now buttons for e-commerce is that they help maximize the ROI of omnichannel marketing.

With so many platforms and channels, it can be quite tricky for e-commerce businesses to drive sales. When trying to lead prospects down your sales funnel, the main cause of friction is the number of touchpoints needed to take them from a piece of content to your shopping cart. 

Which is where Buy Now buttons can save the day.

By placing buttons on platforms your target audience frequents, you can encourage them to buy right from that very platform. Wondering where you can use a Buy Now button for e-commerce success? Here are some of the most effective locations:

Use Buy Now Buttons on Blog Posts

Studies show that 87% of people research a product online before making a decision to buy. One way they research is by reading blog posts. These can be blog-styled product reviews or other pieces of content that feature or mention said product.

For e-commerce stores, bridging the divide between the content experience and the purchasing experience can be a struggle. Few have managed to design an experience that results in interested shoppers actually checking out. (If you do need help with this, feel free to reach out on my digital marketing consulting page.)

Buy Now buttons eliminate the long transition from content to checkout.  

By clicking on the button right there in the content, readers are taken straight to the product page where they can make their purchase.

Boost Your Email Marketing ROI with Buy Now Buttons

Email marketing is important for generating sales for your business. It gives an average ROI of $44 for every dollar spent.

That’s why you must incorporate a Buy Now button in your email campaigns. It bolsters an already solid marketing strategy. 

Here’s a good example from Etsy. It alerts the user that an item they’ve already added to their shopping cart is now on sale, giving them a great incentive to complete the sales process:

This helps provide a great UX by streamlining the email to checkout experience.

Win the Affiliate Marketing War with Buy Now Buttons

Affiliate marketing is all the rage right now because setting up an affiliate site is super easy.

Doing it effectively, however, is another thing altogether.

That’s why you need to leverage the power of the Buy Now button and add it to your affiliate links. The visual appeal of a Buy Now button is more compelling than a normal link and is bound to drive your conversions up.

Fire Up Your Retargeting with Buy Now Buttons

Statistics say the average conversion rate on websites is about 2%. That means 98% of the people that visit your website never take action.

This is where retargeting comes to play.

Using cookies, you can “follow” them around the web showcasing your products – particularly the one they expressed interest in.

Enter the Buy Now button.

A well-designed retargeting campaign with an equally well-optimized Buy Now button is a potent solution to winning back bounced visitors and turning them into paying customers.

How to Optimize Your E-commerce Buy Now Button for Explosive Conversions: 3 Easy Tips

To understand how best to optimize your Buy Now button, you must first understand the psychology behind it. Here’s a brief explanation of  how to ensure your button will convert like gangbusters:

Purple Cows Drive Sales

First coined by Seth Godin, a purple cow is hard to miss.

That’s exactly what your Buy Now button needs to be. To achieve this, your Buy Now button must be designed to look like a totally different element from the rest of your site. Two ways to do this are making your Buy Now button big and using a contrasting color.

For your Buy Now button to be a purple cow, it must look like it doesn’t belong.

This design strategy will help you achieve two things:

Visual impact: By being different, your Buy Now button will immediately attract attention. 

Rouse curiosity: Human beings are curious by nature. Anything different rouses curiosity and compels users to investigate more. 

.These two steps will ensure users take a closer look at your offer — and hopefully increase your sales. 

Use Color Psychology to Trigger an Emotional Response

Research has proven what many people have denied for a long time: people’s purchase decisions are based more on emotion than logic.

One of the best ways to trigger emotional responses is by employing color psychology.

Color is a great way to make people feel what you want them to feel, and more importantly, take the action you want them to take. So which colors work best with Buy Now buttons?

Here are a few examples:

Red 

Red invokes excitement and urgency. These are emotions that encourage shoppers to take action quickly. The feeling of excitement also helps buyers get excited about their purchase, thereby encouraging them to click your Buy Now button.

Orange 

This color inspires feelings of confidence, warmth, activity, and friendliness. It’s best suited for Buy Now buttons selling outdoor products and other products associated with excitement, vitality, and fun.

Green

Green is often associated with tranquility, nature, power, and health. Selling supplements and other health products or farming accessories? A green Buy Now button could help you drive sales by helping you form an emotional connection with your target audience.

Blue

Associated with tranquility, water, reliability, and peace, the color blue works best for brands that want to evoke feelings of security, reliability, and stability, just like the logos of Ford, Samsung, and PayPal.

Placement Can Help You Bank More

The placement of Buy Now buttons for e-commerce can be tricky. That’s particularly true on platforms you have no control over. 

However, on your web pages, find a place users can’t miss and place your Buy Now button there. A few places to consider include:

Immediately below your product’s featured image

Above the fold, if it’s on a website, landing page, or email.

The key with placement is to ensure your Buy Now button occupies a prominent position.

Tracking and Analytics For E-Commerce Buy Now Buttons 

Tracking the performance of your Buy Now buttons is not straightforward. That’s because you’ll have to track it across multiple domains and channels. 

One of the best solutions to tracking your Buy Now button across multiple domains is to use Google Analytics’ cross-domain tracking function. It must be installed correctly, as a single error in your cross-domain configuration could result in no or flawed data.

However, once configured properly, you’ll be able to get valuable data to optimize your campaigns on the different platforms you’re marketing your product(s) on. From impressions to conversions, every little piece of data is gold.

Testing Your Buy Now Buttons

Buy Now buttons often look pretty simple, but there are a lot of factors involved in designing and deploying an effective one. 

One of those factors is testing the effectiveness of your Buy Now button.

No matter how much time and resources you invest in creating a perfect Buy Now button, there are some factors you need to test for before implementing your button, including:

Payment settings

Browser compatibility

Device compatibility

Size

Placement

Color

Copy

In addition to these factors, make sure your links work and send buyers to the right page.

Conclusion

Looking to drive more sales to your e-commerce store?

Then don’t overlook one of the most important elements on all your assets – the Buy Now button. When optimized and deployed well, this simple element can work wonders on your bottom line.

What Buy Now button best practices have helped you sell more?

The post How to Boost ROI with Optimized Buy Now Buttons appeared first on Neil Patel.

Original content source: https://neilpatel.com/blog/buy-now-buttons/ via https://neilpatel.com

The original post, How to Boost ROI with Optimized Buy Now Buttons, has been shared from https://imtrainingparadise.wordpress.com/2020/09/09/how-to-boost-roi-with-optimized-buy-now-buttons/ via https://imtrainingparadise.wordpress.com

How to Boost ROI with Optimized Buy Now Buttons

E-commerce has become a cutthroat industry.

With everyone and their brother-in-law setting up e-commerce businesses and the competition is super stiff. 

That’s why you must do everything in your power to position yourself for more sales.

One way to do that is to optimize your Buy Now buttons.

What is a Buy Now Button, and Why is Optimization Important?

Cart abandonment costs businesses $4.6 trillion globally. Research shows that two of the top reasons shoppers abandon carts are:

28% say it’s because of being forced to create an account

21% say it’s due to a long (or complicated) checkout process

Optimized buy now buttons can help streamline this process for users by kicking off a simpler checkout process. In its simplest form, a Buy Now button is a link or actual CTA button that, once clicked on, takes shoppers directly to a:

Product page: this works best if you’re promoting a new product and want prospects to see some social proof before buying.

Cart: Looking to increase your average order value (AOV)? Then link your Buy Now button to the shopping cart and encourage buyers to meet the deal or shipping threshold you’ve set. 

Checkout page: This works best for products you’re promoting with urgency/scarcity, like a flash sale. 

The advantages of Buy Now buttons are that they reduce cart abandonment rates and increase sales. 

Here’s a typical example from the e-commerce giant, Amazon:

 4 Ways to The Buy Now Button for E-Commerce Can Help Increase Your Revenue

Let me show you four simple, yet powerful reasons why Buy Now buttons can make a huge difference in your bottom line:

Generate Demand 

Demand generation is an important aspect of increasing online sales. A well-optimized Buy Now button is a great way to generate demand across multiple online platforms. 

Speed Up the Checkout Process

Buy Now buttons bypass most steps and protocols shoppers have to go through to make a purchase, thereby helping customers make purchases faster.

Skip Account Creation

Not everyone who buys from your store wants to create an account. A Buy Now button makes it easy for shoppers to purchase products on your store as guests from any platform they see your product on. 

Improve User Experience (UX)

With a Buy Now button, you can sell to your customers from any website or platform (like social media) that supports the Buy Now button function. This drastically improves your UX, as customers can make a purchase on the same site in seconds.

Buy Now buttons make life easier for both you and your customers.

Where Can You Use Buy Now Buttons?

One of the biggest advantages of Buy Now buttons for e-commerce is that they help maximize the ROI of omnichannel marketing.

With so many platforms and channels, it can be quite tricky for e-commerce businesses to drive sales. When trying to lead prospects down your sales funnel, the main cause of friction is the number of touchpoints needed to take them from a piece of content to your shopping cart. 

Which is where Buy Now buttons can save the day.

By placing buttons on platforms your target audience frequents, you can encourage them to buy right from that very platform. Wondering where you can use a Buy Now button for e-commerce success? Here are some of the most effective locations:

Use Buy Now Buttons on Blog Posts

Studies show that 87% of people research a product online before making a decision to buy. One way they research is by reading blog posts. These can be blog-styled product reviews or other pieces of content that feature or mention said product.

For e-commerce stores, bridging the divide between the content experience and the purchasing experience can be a struggle. Few have managed to design an experience that results in interested shoppers actually checking out. (If you do need help with this, feel free to reach out on my digital marketing consulting page.)

Buy Now buttons eliminate the long transition from content to checkout.  

By clicking on the button right there in the content, readers are taken straight to the product page where they can make their purchase.

Boost Your Email Marketing ROI with Buy Now Buttons

Email marketing is important for generating sales for your business. It gives an average ROI of $44 for every dollar spent.

That’s why you must incorporate a Buy Now button in your email campaigns. It bolsters an already solid marketing strategy. 

Here’s a good example from Etsy. It alerts the user that an item they’ve already added to their shopping cart is now on sale, giving them a great incentive to complete the sales process:

This helps provide a great UX by streamlining the email to checkout experience.

Win the Affiliate Marketing War with Buy Now Buttons

Affiliate marketing is all the rage right now because setting up an affiliate site is super easy.

Doing it effectively, however, is another thing altogether.

That’s why you need to leverage the power of the Buy Now button and add it to your affiliate links. The visual appeal of a Buy Now button is more compelling than a normal link and is bound to drive your conversions up.

Fire Up Your Retargeting with Buy Now Buttons

Statistics say the average conversion rate on websites is about 2%. That means 98% of the people that visit your website never take action.

This is where retargeting comes to play.

Using cookies, you can “follow” them around the web showcasing your products – particularly the one they expressed interest in.

Enter the Buy Now button.

A well-designed retargeting campaign with an equally well-optimized Buy Now button is a potent solution to winning back bounced visitors and turning them into paying customers.

How to Optimize Your E-commerce Buy Now Button for Explosive Conversions: 3 Easy Tips

To understand how best to optimize your Buy Now button, you must first understand the psychology behind it. Here’s a brief explanation of  how to ensure your button will convert like gangbusters:

Purple Cows Drive Sales

First coined by Seth Godin, a purple cow is hard to miss.

That’s exactly what your Buy Now button needs to be. To achieve this, your Buy Now button must be designed to look like a totally different element from the rest of your site. Two ways to do this are making your Buy Now button big and using a contrasting color.

For your Buy Now button to be a purple cow, it must look like it doesn’t belong.

This design strategy will help you achieve two things:

Visual impact: By being different, your Buy Now button will immediately attract attention. 

Rouse curiosity: Human beings are curious by nature. Anything different rouses curiosity and compels users to investigate more. 

.These two steps will ensure users take a closer look at your offer — and hopefully increase your sales. 

Use Color Psychology to Trigger an Emotional Response

Research has proven what many people have denied for a long time: people’s purchase decisions are based more on emotion than logic.

One of the best ways to trigger emotional responses is by employing color psychology.

Color is a great way to make people feel what you want them to feel, and more importantly, take the action you want them to take. So which colors work best with Buy Now buttons?

Here are a few examples:

Red 

Red invokes excitement and urgency. These are emotions that encourage shoppers to take action quickly. The feeling of excitement also helps buyers get excited about their purchase, thereby encouraging them to click your Buy Now button.

Orange 

This color inspires feelings of confidence, warmth, activity, and friendliness. It’s best suited for Buy Now buttons selling outdoor products and other products associated with excitement, vitality, and fun.

Green

Green is often associated with tranquility, nature, power, and health. Selling supplements and other health products or farming accessories? A green Buy Now button could help you drive sales by helping you form an emotional connection with your target audience.

Blue

Associated with tranquility, water, reliability, and peace, the color blue works best for brands that want to evoke feelings of security, reliability, and stability, just like the logos of Ford, Samsung, and PayPal.

Placement Can Help You Bank More

The placement of Buy Now buttons for e-commerce can be tricky. That’s particularly true on platforms you have no control over. 

However, on your web pages, find a place users can’t miss and place your Buy Now button there. A few places to consider include:

Immediately below your product’s featured image

Above the fold, if it’s on a website, landing page, or email.

The key with placement is to ensure your Buy Now button occupies a prominent position.

Tracking and Analytics For E-Commerce Buy Now Buttons 

Tracking the performance of your Buy Now buttons is not straightforward. That’s because you’ll have to track it across multiple domains and channels. 

One of the best solutions to tracking your Buy Now button across multiple domains is to use Google Analytics’ cross-domain tracking function. It must be installed correctly, as a single error in your cross-domain configuration could result in no or flawed data.

However, once configured properly, you’ll be able to get valuable data to optimize your campaigns on the different platforms you’re marketing your product(s) on. From impressions to conversions, every little piece of data is gold.

Testing Your Buy Now Buttons

Buy Now buttons often look pretty simple, but there are a lot of factors involved in designing and deploying an effective one. 

One of those factors is testing the effectiveness of your Buy Now button.

No matter how much time and resources you invest in creating a perfect Buy Now button, there are some factors you need to test for before implementing your button, including:

Payment settings

Browser compatibility

Device compatibility

Size

Placement

Color

Copy

In addition to these factors, make sure your links work and send buyers to the right page.

Conclusion

Looking to drive more sales to your e-commerce store?

Then don’t overlook one of the most important elements on all your assets – the Buy Now button. When optimized and deployed well, this simple element can work wonders on your bottom line.

What Buy Now button best practices have helped you sell more?

The post How to Boost ROI with Optimized Buy Now Buttons appeared first on Neil Patel.

Original content source: https://ift.tt/2R9vFA1 via https://neilpatel.com The post, How to Boost ROI with Optimized Buy Now Buttons, has been shared from https://ift.tt/3k5s42x via https://ift.tt/2r0Go64

How to Boost ROI with Optimized Buy Now Buttons

E-commerce has become a cutthroat industry.

With everyone and their brother-in-law setting up e-commerce businesses and the competition is super stiff. 

That’s why you must do everything in your power to position yourself for more sales.

One way to do that is to optimize your Buy Now buttons.

What is a Buy Now Button, and Why is Optimization Important?

Cart abandonment costs businesses $4.6 trillion globally. Research shows that two of the top reasons shoppers abandon carts are:

28% say it’s because of being forced to create an account

21% say it’s due to a long (or complicated) checkout process

Optimized buy now buttons can help streamline this process for users by kicking off a simpler checkout process. In its simplest form, a Buy Now button is a link or actual CTA button that, once clicked on, takes shoppers directly to a:

Product page: this works best if you’re promoting a new product and want prospects to see some social proof before buying.

Cart: Looking to increase your average order value (AOV)? Then link your Buy Now button to the shopping cart and encourage buyers to meet the deal or shipping threshold you’ve set. 

Checkout page: This works best for products you’re promoting with urgency/scarcity, like a flash sale. 

The advantages of Buy Now buttons are that they reduce cart abandonment rates and increase sales. 

Here’s a typical example from the e-commerce giant, Amazon:

 4 Ways to The Buy Now Button for E-Commerce Can Help Increase Your Revenue

Let me show you four simple, yet powerful reasons why Buy Now buttons can make a huge difference in your bottom line:

Generate Demand 

Demand generation is an important aspect of increasing online sales. A well-optimized Buy Now button is a great way to generate demand across multiple online platforms. 

Speed Up the Checkout Process

Buy Now buttons bypass most steps and protocols shoppers have to go through to make a purchase, thereby helping customers make purchases faster.

Skip Account Creation

Not everyone who buys from your store wants to create an account. A Buy Now button makes it easy for shoppers to purchase products on your store as guests from any platform they see your product on. 

Improve User Experience (UX)

With a Buy Now button, you can sell to your customers from any website or platform (like social media) that supports the Buy Now button function. This drastically improves your UX, as customers can make a purchase on the same site in seconds.

Buy Now buttons make life easier for both you and your customers.

Where Can You Use Buy Now Buttons?

One of the biggest advantages of Buy Now buttons for e-commerce is that they help maximize the ROI of omnichannel marketing.

With so many platforms and channels, it can be quite tricky for e-commerce businesses to drive sales. When trying to lead prospects down your sales funnel, the main cause of friction is the number of touchpoints needed to take them from a piece of content to your shopping cart. 

Which is where Buy Now buttons can save the day.

By placing buttons on platforms your target audience frequents, you can encourage them to buy right from that very platform. Wondering where you can use a Buy Now button for e-commerce success? Here are some of the most effective locations:

Use Buy Now Buttons on Blog Posts

Studies show that 87% of people research a product online before making a decision to buy. One way they research is by reading blog posts. These can be blog-styled product reviews or other pieces of content that feature or mention said product.

For e-commerce stores, bridging the divide between the content experience and the purchasing experience can be a struggle. Few have managed to design an experience that results in interested shoppers actually checking out. (If you do need help with this, feel free to reach out on my digital marketing consulting page.)

Buy Now buttons eliminate the long transition from content to checkout.  

By clicking on the button right there in the content, readers are taken straight to the product page where they can make their purchase.

Boost Your Email Marketing ROI with Buy Now Buttons

Email marketing is important for generating sales for your business. It gives an average ROI of $44 for every dollar spent.

That’s why you must incorporate a Buy Now button in your email campaigns. It bolsters an already solid marketing strategy. 

Here’s a good example from Etsy. It alerts the user that an item they’ve already added to their shopping cart is now on sale, giving them a great incentive to complete the sales process:

This helps provide a great UX by streamlining the email to checkout experience.

Win the Affiliate Marketing War with Buy Now Buttons

Affiliate marketing is all the rage right now because setting up an affiliate site is super easy.

Doing it effectively, however, is another thing altogether.

That’s why you need to leverage the power of the Buy Now button and add it to your affiliate links. The visual appeal of a Buy Now button is more compelling than a normal link and is bound to drive your conversions up.

Fire Up Your Retargeting with Buy Now Buttons

Statistics say the average conversion rate on websites is about 2%. That means 98% of the people that visit your website never take action.

This is where retargeting comes to play.

Using cookies, you can “follow” them around the web showcasing your products – particularly the one they expressed interest in.

Enter the Buy Now button.

A well-designed retargeting campaign with an equally well-optimized Buy Now button is a potent solution to winning back bounced visitors and turning them into paying customers.

How to Optimize Your E-commerce Buy Now Button for Explosive Conversions: 3 Easy Tips

To understand how best to optimize your Buy Now button, you must first understand the psychology behind it. Here’s a brief explanation of  how to ensure your button will convert like gangbusters:

Purple Cows Drive Sales

First coined by Seth Godin, a purple cow is hard to miss.

That’s exactly what your Buy Now button needs to be. To achieve this, your Buy Now button must be designed to look like a totally different element from the rest of your site. Two ways to do this are making your Buy Now button big and using a contrasting color.

For your Buy Now button to be a purple cow, it must look like it doesn’t belong.

This design strategy will help you achieve two things:

Visual impact: By being different, your Buy Now button will immediately attract attention. 

Rouse curiosity: Human beings are curious by nature. Anything different rouses curiosity and compels users to investigate more. 

.These two steps will ensure users take a closer look at your offer — and hopefully increase your sales. 

Use Color Psychology to Trigger an Emotional Response

Research has proven what many people have denied for a long time: people’s purchase decisions are based more on emotion than logic.

One of the best ways to trigger emotional responses is by employing color psychology.

Color is a great way to make people feel what you want them to feel, and more importantly, take the action you want them to take. So which colors work best with Buy Now buttons?

Here are a few examples:

Red 

Red invokes excitement and urgency. These are emotions that encourage shoppers to take action quickly. The feeling of excitement also helps buyers get excited about their purchase, thereby encouraging them to click your Buy Now button.

Orange 

This color inspires feelings of confidence, warmth, activity, and friendliness. It’s best suited for Buy Now buttons selling outdoor products and other products associated with excitement, vitality, and fun.

Green

Green is often associated with tranquility, nature, power, and health. Selling supplements and other health products or farming accessories? A green Buy Now button could help you drive sales by helping you form an emotional connection with your target audience.

Blue

Associated with tranquility, water, reliability, and peace, the color blue works best for brands that want to evoke feelings of security, reliability, and stability, just like the logos of Ford, Samsung, and PayPal.

Placement Can Help You Bank More

The placement of Buy Now buttons for e-commerce can be tricky. That’s particularly true on platforms you have no control over. 

However, on your web pages, find a place users can’t miss and place your Buy Now button there. A few places to consider include:

Immediately below your product’s featured image

Above the fold, if it’s on a website, landing page, or email.

The key with placement is to ensure your Buy Now button occupies a prominent position.

Tracking and Analytics For E-Commerce Buy Now Buttons 

Tracking the performance of your Buy Now buttons is not straightforward. That’s because you’ll have to track it across multiple domains and channels. 

One of the best solutions to tracking your Buy Now button across multiple domains is to use Google Analytics’ cross-domain tracking function. It must be installed correctly, as a single error in your cross-domain configuration could result in no or flawed data.

However, once configured properly, you’ll be able to get valuable data to optimize your campaigns on the different platforms you’re marketing your product(s) on. From impressions to conversions, every little piece of data is gold.

Testing Your Buy Now Buttons

Buy Now buttons often look pretty simple, but there are a lot of factors involved in designing and deploying an effective one. 

One of those factors is testing the effectiveness of your Buy Now button.

No matter how much time and resources you invest in creating a perfect Buy Now button, there are some factors you need to test for before implementing your button, including:

Payment settings

Browser compatibility

Device compatibility

Size

Placement

Color

Copy

In addition to these factors, make sure your links work and send buyers to the right page.

Conclusion

Looking to drive more sales to your e-commerce store?

Then don’t overlook one of the most important elements on all your assets – the Buy Now button. When optimized and deployed well, this simple element can work wonders on your bottom line.

What Buy Now button best practices have helped you sell more?

The post How to Boost ROI with Optimized Buy Now Buttons appeared first on Neil Patel.

How to Boost ROI with Optimized Buy Now Buttons Publicado primeiro em https://neilpatel.com

How to Boost ROI with Optimized Buy Now Buttons

E-commerce has become a cutthroat industry.

With everyone and their brother-in-law setting up e-commerce businesses and the competition is super stiff. 

That’s why you must do everything in your power to position yourself for more sales.

One way to do that is to optimize your Buy Now buttons.

What is a Buy Now Button, and Why is Optimization Important?

Cart abandonment costs businesses $4.6 trillion globally. Research shows that two of the top reasons shoppers abandon carts are:

28% say it’s because of being forced to create an account

21% say it’s due to a long (or complicated) checkout process

Optimized buy now buttons can help streamline this process for users by kicking off a simpler checkout process. In its simplest form, a Buy Now button is a link or actual CTA button that, once clicked on, takes shoppers directly to a:

Product page: this works best if you’re promoting a new product and want prospects to see some social proof before buying.

Cart: Looking to increase your average order value (AOV)? Then link your Buy Now button to the shopping cart and encourage buyers to meet the deal or shipping threshold you’ve set. 

Checkout page: This works best for products you’re promoting with urgency/scarcity, like a flash sale. 

The advantages of Buy Now buttons are that they reduce cart abandonment rates and increase sales. 

Here’s a typical example from the e-commerce giant, Amazon:

 4 Ways to The Buy Now Button for E-Commerce Can Help Increase Your Revenue

Let me show you four simple, yet powerful reasons why Buy Now buttons can make a huge difference in your bottom line:

Generate Demand 

Demand generation is an important aspect of increasing online sales. A well-optimized Buy Now button is a great way to generate demand across multiple online platforms. 

Speed Up the Checkout Process

Buy Now buttons bypass most steps and protocols shoppers have to go through to make a purchase, thereby helping customers make purchases faster.

Skip Account Creation

Not everyone who buys from your store wants to create an account. A Buy Now button makes it easy for shoppers to purchase products on your store as guests from any platform they see your product on. 

Improve User Experience (UX)

With a Buy Now button, you can sell to your customers from any website or platform (like social media) that supports the Buy Now button function. This drastically improves your UX, as customers can make a purchase on the same site in seconds.

Buy Now buttons make life easier for both you and your customers.

Where Can You Use Buy Now Buttons?

One of the biggest advantages of Buy Now buttons for e-commerce is that they help maximize the ROI of omnichannel marketing.

With so many platforms and channels, it can be quite tricky for e-commerce businesses to drive sales. When trying to lead prospects down your sales funnel, the main cause of friction is the number of touchpoints needed to take them from a piece of content to your shopping cart. 

Which is where Buy Now buttons can save the day.

By placing buttons on platforms your target audience frequents, you can encourage them to buy right from that very platform. Wondering where you can use a Buy Now button for e-commerce success? Here are some of the most effective locations:

Use Buy Now Buttons on Blog Posts

Studies show that 87% of people research a product online before making a decision to buy. One way they research is by reading blog posts. These can be blog-styled product reviews or other pieces of content that feature or mention said product.

For e-commerce stores, bridging the divide between the content experience and the purchasing experience can be a struggle. Few have managed to design an experience that results in interested shoppers actually checking out. (If you do need help with this, feel free to reach out on my digital marketing consulting page.)

Buy Now buttons eliminate the long transition from content to checkout.  

By clicking on the button right there in the content, readers are taken straight to the product page where they can make their purchase.

Boost Your Email Marketing ROI with Buy Now Buttons

Email marketing is important for generating sales for your business. It gives an average ROI of $44 for every dollar spent.

That’s why you must incorporate a Buy Now button in your email campaigns. It bolsters an already solid marketing strategy. 

Here’s a good example from Etsy. It alerts the user that an item they’ve already added to their shopping cart is now on sale, giving them a great incentive to complete the sales process:

This helps provide a great UX by streamlining the email to checkout experience.

Win the Affiliate Marketing War with Buy Now Buttons

Affiliate marketing is all the rage right now because setting up an affiliate site is super easy.

Doing it effectively, however, is another thing altogether.

That’s why you need to leverage the power of the Buy Now button and add it to your affiliate links. The visual appeal of a Buy Now button is more compelling than a normal link and is bound to drive your conversions up.

Fire Up Your Retargeting with Buy Now Buttons

Statistics say the average conversion rate on websites is about 2%. That means 98% of the people that visit your website never take action.

This is where retargeting comes to play.

Using cookies, you can “follow” them around the web showcasing your products – particularly the one they expressed interest in.

Enter the Buy Now button.

A well-designed retargeting campaign with an equally well-optimized Buy Now button is a potent solution to winning back bounced visitors and turning them into paying customers.

How to Optimize Your E-commerce Buy Now Button for Explosive Conversions: 3 Easy Tips

To understand how best to optimize your Buy Now button, you must first understand the psychology behind it. Here’s a brief explanation of  how to ensure your button will convert like gangbusters:

Purple Cows Drive Sales

First coined by Seth Godin, a purple cow is hard to miss.

That’s exactly what your Buy Now button needs to be. To achieve this, your Buy Now button must be designed to look like a totally different element from the rest of your site. Two ways to do this are making your Buy Now button big and using a contrasting color.

For your Buy Now button to be a purple cow, it must look like it doesn’t belong.

This design strategy will help you achieve two things:

Visual impact: By being different, your Buy Now button will immediately attract attention. 

Rouse curiosity: Human beings are curious by nature. Anything different rouses curiosity and compels users to investigate more. 

.These two steps will ensure users take a closer look at your offer — and hopefully increase your sales. 

Use Color Psychology to Trigger an Emotional Response

Research has proven what many people have denied for a long time: people’s purchase decisions are based more on emotion than logic.

One of the best ways to trigger emotional responses is by employing color psychology.

Color is a great way to make people feel what you want them to feel, and more importantly, take the action you want them to take. So which colors work best with Buy Now buttons?

Here are a few examples:

Red 

Red invokes excitement and urgency. These are emotions that encourage shoppers to take action quickly. The feeling of excitement also helps buyers get excited about their purchase, thereby encouraging them to click your Buy Now button.

Orange 

This color inspires feelings of confidence, warmth, activity, and friendliness. It’s best suited for Buy Now buttons selling outdoor products and other products associated with excitement, vitality, and fun.

Green

Green is often associated with tranquility, nature, power, and health. Selling supplements and other health products or farming accessories? A green Buy Now button could help you drive sales by helping you form an emotional connection with your target audience.

Blue

Associated with tranquility, water, reliability, and peace, the color blue works best for brands that want to evoke feelings of security, reliability, and stability, just like the logos of Ford, Samsung, and PayPal.

Placement Can Help You Bank More

The placement of Buy Now buttons for e-commerce can be tricky. That’s particularly true on platforms you have no control over. 

However, on your web pages, find a place users can’t miss and place your Buy Now button there. A few places to consider include:

Immediately below your product’s featured image

Above the fold, if it’s on a website, landing page, or email.

The key with placement is to ensure your Buy Now button occupies a prominent position.

Tracking and Analytics For E-Commerce Buy Now Buttons 

Tracking the performance of your Buy Now buttons is not straightforward. That’s because you’ll have to track it across multiple domains and channels. 

One of the best solutions to tracking your Buy Now button across multiple domains is to use Google Analytics’ cross-domain tracking function. It must be installed correctly, as a single error in your cross-domain configuration could result in no or flawed data.

However, once configured properly, you’ll be able to get valuable data to optimize your campaigns on the different platforms you’re marketing your product(s) on. From impressions to conversions, every little piece of data is gold.

Testing Your Buy Now Buttons

Buy Now buttons often look pretty simple, but there are a lot of factors involved in designing and deploying an effective one. 

One of those factors is testing the effectiveness of your Buy Now button.

No matter how much time and resources you invest in creating a perfect Buy Now button, there are some factors you need to test for before implementing your button, including:

Payment settings

Browser compatibility

Device compatibility

Size

Placement

Color

Copy

In addition to these factors, make sure your links work and send buyers to the right page.

Conclusion

Looking to drive more sales to your e-commerce store?

Then don’t overlook one of the most important elements on all your assets – the Buy Now button. When optimized and deployed well, this simple element can work wonders on your bottom line.

What Buy Now button best practices have helped you sell more?

The post How to Boost ROI with Optimized Buy Now Buttons appeared first on Neil Patel.

Original content source: https://neilpatel.com/blog/buy-now-buttons/ via https://neilpatel.com

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British Prime Minister Gambling's Latest Antichrist? Oh Please

As a journalist with respected website Poker Pages and co-presenter of a display on Holdem Radio, Amy Calistri is virtually no mug however her current assessment of Gordon Brown's U-turn on supercasinos indicates that she is aware of Vegas rather higher than she does the shires of Britain  cach tinh lo de mien nam One of Prime Minister Brown's first acts upon succeeding Tony Blair ultimate month turned into to correctly consign to the scrapheap the Labour authorities's proposals for a wave of British supercasinos. In Ms Calistri's eyes, this places the Scotsman firmly alongside US Senator Bill Frist in the playing corridor of shame. Frist it turned into who drove the debatable Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act into life in 2006, correctly imposing a ban upon on-line poker.

"The UK has its very own gambling Dark Ages' poster boy..." Calistri rages in a Poker News article on July twenty fourth. "The UK's gaming reform experiment was seven years inside the making and became poised to be an interesting counterpoint to modern US policy. But what took seven years to plot took one guy only 4 months to resolve. And in that context, the United Kingdom's gaming policy revel in is beginning to replicate our own; the workout of 1 guy's will." At least Calistri sets out her own schedule early within the report, mentioning that, pre-Brown, "The global envy of US playing minded residents and loose market philosophers was heightened through the United Kingdom's apparent rational reaction to on line gaming; looking for to legislate and regulate the terrain." Okay, so in case you're a laissez-faire capitalist, Brown's intervention is heavy-passed and regrettable. People far greater qualified than me in economics, however, could debate both aspects of the unfastened market hot potato all night.

Where Calistri simply wanders from truth, however, is in lumping Brown together with Frist as the villains of the piece and painting a image of the British Premier as a dinosaur out of step with the Society around him.

Amy, you need to visit Britain for a while. If I inform you that protecting my u . S . A .'s present day Government comes as without problems to me as advocating the abolition of Christmas, you may get an idea of how extensive of the mark I think you have got strayed.

Far from Gordon Brown isolating himself with his decision to sideline the supercasinos, I doubt that there was any better way he should have ingratiated himself along with his electorate. The simplest humans captivated with the casino growth within the UK were people who stood to pocket maximum of the income. Even as online gambling booms this side of the Atlantic, the impetus for supercasinos right here has been generated solely by way of Labour politicians, disturbing to ingratiate their celebration with all people with money to spend, regardless of how it is able to be generated.

We have already got modest however successful casinos inside the UK, you notice, along side criminal sportsbooks ('bookmakers', we decide upon to name them in Britain) and felony online gaming. So properly catered for are we, indeed, that the most effective issue that comes close to irking your regular Brit gambler proper now is the prison minefield he enters with the aid of gambling poker in his local bar. Even there, compromise is being reached and development made.

So with their playing urges already sorted, there has in no way been any high-quality clamour for supercasinos amongst Britons. On the contrary, in fact. At coronary heart, most of the people this side of the Pond, I suspect, sense extra cozy with playing as a sideline activity in our cities than as one of the cornerstones of that buzz phrase 'urban regeneration'.

Forgive us if we're cynical in the direction of the perception of towns being revitalised with the aid of playing. It's just that we read about protest marches in Macau, whose own casino boom has supposed difficulty for the poorer sections of the populace, who locate rents and property costs spiralling beyond their way. Or is not 'regeneration' intended to use to them?

Then we read the censure of Louisiana's civic leaders inside the leader column of a neighborhood newspaper, when they too sought the 'regeneration' dollar:

"Louisiana officers frittered away the Nineteen Nineties by means of specializing in expansion of diverse styles of playing as a therapy for Louisiana's monetary woes. Alas, playing has now not delivered the promised pot of gold on the quit of the rainbow, and Louisiana keeps to lag tons of the united states in economic development. "Louisiana could be tons higher off today if we had spent the beyond decade taking note of more fundamental reforms to develop enterprise, which includes investing in training, reforming our tax laws, streamlining state government and dramatically tightening our ethics code."

We examine, we contemplate and we suppose "no thanks". In our Old Country gamblers' hearts, we realize that even as Las Vegas may call us like Mecca, it isn't dubbed 'Sin City' for nothing - "the flashiest, blackest hollow inside the universe," poker blogger Pauly calls it. When its promoters inform us that there is only one Vegas, we utter a subconscious 'Amen'. All Gordon Brown has performed is trap this temper and supply it voice; some thing of which his wretched predecessor (yes, America: you have him totally incorrect, too) become singularly incapable.

He has not piggy-backed sick-conceived rules on the shoulders of port security measures he knew were guaranteed safe passage. He has not ushered in his whims under the nostril of a snoozing nation within the dead of night time. He could no longer have us accept as true with that whilst a few varieties of online gambling are the paintings of Satan, others - which simply show up to be followed via lobbying muscle or the whiff of vested pursuits - are as natural as the pushed snow.

Vape News – Australian Nicotine Ban Delayed

Last week the Therapeutic Goods Administration announced plans to change legislation that would make liquid nicotine importation illegal. After a week of community backlash, the Minister of Health Greg Hunt MP, has backed down and delayed the date of the bans to the 1st of January 2020. This gives Australian vapers six months to obtain a legal prescription and allows the TGA and Dr’s time to work out how nicotine will be supplied within Australia. 

Several MPs from Greg Hunt’s own party came out in support of vaping. A petition started by the Liberal Nationals gained over 30,000 signatures in just a few days, a response that has never before been seen for a parliamentary petition. The response from the vaping community has been truly amazing. With so many people actively engaging with our politicians through emails and phone calls, our voices were heard!

While this may only be a reprieve from the proposed importation ban, it does offer some hope. You can find Greg Hunt’s full media release here, but I’d like to take a closer look at the wording of the press release. 

E-Cigarettes are far safer than smoking by Cancer Research UK

Unpacking Greg Hunt's media release

Smoking rates in Australia have declined significantly over the past two decades, from 22.3 per cent in 2001 to 13.8 per cent in 2017-18. But the latest statistics show tobacco use still contributed to an estimated 21,000 deaths, or more than one in eight, in 2015. This is why we need to drive down those smoking rates further.

Greg Hunt recognises the need to drop smoking rates further, but, it’s clear that taxes are NOT lowering the rates as the government hoped. If the aim is to reduce the smoking rate further, why is Greg Hunt so against vaping?

In particular, around the world we have seen strong evidence of non-smokers being introduced to nicotine through vaping for the first time.

I find this comment interesting, where is this strong evidence from around the world? A study from 2017 found that “most e-cigarette experimentation does not turn into regular use, and levels of regular use in young people who have never smoked remain very low.” Another study in 2016 found that “E-cigarette use in the European Union appears to be largely confined to current, or former smokers, while current use and nicotine use by people who have never smoked is rare. More than one-third of current e-cigarette users polled reported smoking cessation and reduction.” There are many studies out there that show the rate of non-smokers taking up vaping is very low.

Therefore the Government is responding to the advice by ensuring that nicotine based e-cigarettes can only be imported on the basis of a prescription from a doctor. This will help prevent the introduction of non-smokers to nicotine via vaping.

It seems Greg Hunt doesn’t know much about nicotine. Why is it so important to prevent non-smokers from consuming nicotine? There is little research to suggest that nicotine on its own is addictive. A 2011 commentary on Nicotine addiction in the 2010 report of the Surgeon General explains how studies and research into nicotine addiction are flawed. There is no clear evidence to show that nicotine on its own and consumed by human subjects is addictive.

However there is a second group of people who have been using these e-cigarettes with nicotine as a means to ending their cigarette smoking. In order to assist this group in continuing to end that addiction we will therefore provide further time for implementation of the change by establishing a streamlined process for patients obtaining prescriptions through their GP. For this reason, the implementation timeframe will be extended by six months to 1 January 2021.

While this sounds like good news, there is no information about this streamlined process. How much paperwork will GP’s have to do in order to be able to prescribe nicotine? Will current vapers be forced to try alternative methods such as gums and medications, before being given a prescription for nicotine? Until there is more information on how the prescription process works, we will be facing the same issues in six months time. There is no mention in the press release of who will be distributing the nicotine or how vapers will be able to purchase it.

Vaping vs. Smoking | E-Cigarette/Electronic Cigarette/E-Cigs/E-Liquid/Vaping/Cloud Chasing by Vaping360 via Flickr CC-BY-SA-2.0

People should always be consulting their GP on these health matters and ensuring this is the right product for them. This will give patients time to talk with the GP, discuss the best way to give up smoking, such as using other products including patches or sprays, and if still required, will be able to gain a prescription.

This is the statement I most have an issue with. It suggests that those seeking a nicotine prescription will be forced to try other products first. If you are a former smoker, chances are you’ve already tried these methods and failed. The burden of proof is on you to show your GP that other available methods don’t work for you. Convincing a GP that these methods don’t work can be an impossible task as most GP’s have little understanding of vaping and its effectiveness.

We note that the RACGP’s Supporting smoking cessation – A guide for health professionals stipulates that nicotine-containing e-cigarettes are not first-line treatments for smoking cessation.

This section contradicts the previous section. Why are we being told to ask our GP’s for prescriptions when they have guidelines that state vaping is not approved as a first line treatment? You’ll need a knowledgeable GP who will go against the guidelines to prescribe nicotine. There is currently only one well known Dr in Australia willing to provide prescriptions for existing vapers over zoom or skype.

During this time, the Therapeutic Goods Administration will undertake a formal review and consultation process regarding the classification of nicotine in the Poisons Standard which will inform the implementation.

I have not yet found any information about this formal review or consultation process. It may be early in the process, or it could mean that this consultation process is taking place behind closed doors without community and consumer input. Rescheduling of nicotine has to happen in order for it to be supplied within Australia. The concern is with how this will be implemented. If nicotine is rescheduled for human use as a smoking cessation aid, this may make it harder for vapers who have no intention of quitting nicotine to get a prescription.

Will liberalising access to e-cigarettes improve the health of Australians? by University of Melbourne via medicalexpress.com

The Victorian Poisons Centre reported a near doubling of nicotine poisons between 2018 (21 cases) and 2019 (41 cases), primarily caused by imported products of dubious safety and quality. A Victorian toddler died from nicotine poisoning in July 2018.

I find it interesting that many of the politicians I’ve contacted in the last week have used this justification to support the ban on nicotine importation. If nicotine was regulated, and available to purchase within Australia in smaller quantities, the occurrence of poisoning would dramatically decline. Most vapers would agree that regulation would assist in preventing poisonings, but it should not be used as a justification to ban nicotine for vaping. The increase in incidents of poisoning is directly attributed to the increased number of vapers in Australia. These poisonings could have been prevented had the TGA and Australian government considered these regulations and changes to legislation sooner. 

Up to this point to access nicotine you needed to order it in bulk quantities from New Zealand. You can either get a doubler mixture of nicotine in a 6mg nicotine solution for adding to short-fills, or you can purchase a concentration of 100mg which can be added in small amounts to eliquids purchased in Australia. The bottles can vary in size from 125ml to 500ml, nicotine needs to be stored in the fridge or the freezer to keep it from oxidising and losing its potency. These larger bottles all have child safety caps, but many people decant their nicotine into smaller bottles for mixing with 0mg e liquid that often don’t have child safety caps. It’s the responsibility of the parent to make sure that poisonous substances are stored safely away from children.

The fight isn't over

It remains to be seen if the proposed changes and regulations will benefit vapers or hinder them. The TGA and RACGP need separate nicotine and tobacco products, they are not the same thing. Much of the confusion about vaping inAustralia, particularly in Victoria, is that vaping products are classed as tobacco products and are governed by the same laws. It also doesn’t help that almost every media outlet reported in the last week that e-cigarette devices were also being banned. 

In the next six months vapers need to keep the pressure on MP’s, senators, the TGA, and PM Scott Morrison to ensure that new regulations don’t exclude current vapers from accessing nicotine. The fight is far from over, but we won this battle! 

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