At the moment the Real Network is an informal email network. We are only an affiliation, not a company. In the future as the project evolves I might consider making it more a more centralized business, charging for premium memberships and so on, but at the moment we are simply an email group with a blog as a kind of base hub.
That being the case, all the rules are by "handshake" agreement and I'm sure that will be good enough for now. The only way I can enforce any rule or guideline is by dropping somebody from the email list I send out. It's understood that you'll simply get the win-win principle involved here and act accordingly. That is, basically, to give-participate is to recieve. The more you visit, buy from, interact with, and promote others' sites the more others will do the same for you. If you're abusive or simply non-participating, you'll tend to get that in return as well.
A Word About Click Fraud
AGAIN: THIS IS NOT A BOGUS SEARCH OR CLICK RING ENTERPRISE IN ANY WAY.
In order to make this a success we need to realize that it's basically all for one and one for all. The only reason we could possibly be accused of something like click fraud is because we we're over-clicking and never buying the products or services they advertise. You're encouraged, of course, to click and view other members' ads, and get your friends and contacts to do so as well. But if you over-click (click adsense type ads repeatedly without considering buying) you'll only succeed in possibly getting somebody's adsense account suspended or shut down, so please don't do that.
Dealing with Abuse of the Service
I don't forsee many problems with some kind of abuse of the Real Network, simply because that would be both a monetarily foolish thing to do and also just isn't the kind of situation where that is really applicable. I can think of only a few types of things that could ostensibly constitute abuse including:
Spamming - If somebody starts sending large amounts of spam email to other members on the list.
Abuse - Somebody starts emailing the members with insults, bad language, etc. (why? I donno...).
Over Clicking - Two people or a group of people agree to repeatedly over-click each others' adsense ads, whether on a web site or ehow, etc. Again like I say, this will tend to take care of itself by way of accounts being investigated or shut down if it does ever get out of hand. Just keep the clicking moderate and more or less interest-based and we'll be fine.
If anyone sees any of this going on simpy email me and I'll contact the party in question and see if it can be resolved. If not I'll just drop them from the list.
A Word About Participation
There is obviously no express obligation to visit, purchase, or generate traffic for somebody's sites. You could theoretically just join the list and sit back and let others generate a lot of good, active site traffic for you, and even earn money that way (at least for a while). Chances are as people were getting no communications from you about traffic generating for them, your traffic would trail off. Why would you want to do this anyway? This is what I mean about the club being "self propelled." If somebody is helping you make money in all kinds of cool ways, it's only natural to do the same for them. I suppose if somebody is completely not participating for a long period of time, and people are complaing about it, I might drop them from the list. But mainly this is all voluntary and will illustrate the win-win principle without much need to enforce anything.
Disclaimer:
Again: The Real Network is not a corporate entity and I am not responsible in any way for anything that happens with people's websites or marketing efforts, any more than I am responsible for that on the internet at large. This is basically an email group/network and nothing more than that from a legal standpoint. There is every likelihood that you'll make money (focused traffic basically IS money), but of course no guarantee of that. Just use common sense and I'm sure everything will go fine.
