New York, NY - March 4, 2004. The Children's Advertising Review Unit (CARU) of the Council of Better Business Bureaus,Inc.(CBBB) the children's advertising industry's self-regulatory forum, is pleased to announce that the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) entered a consent decree with and imposed $400,000 in penalties on UMG Recordings, Inc. after the company refused to cooperate with CARU's voluntary program. CARU referred the case to the FTC after evaluating UMG's lilromeo.com Website and finding serious violations of both CARU's Self-Regulatory Guidelines for Children's Advertising and the federal Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) regarding the online privacy of children. When the company refused to make the changes required by the Guidelines and COPPA, CARU, under its Procedures, referred the case to the FTC.

As a self-regulatory forum, CARU monitors and evaluates Websites and advertising directed at children, informs companies of any problems, suggests solutions, and requests that changes be made. CARU noted that by refusing to make the changes when requested by CARU, UMG subjected itself to the payment of substantial penalties. The violations involved in the case related to the collection of personal information on Lilromeo.com from children under age 13 without obtaining prior parental consent as required by both the Guidelines and COPPA.

For a copy of the CARU case, email elascoutx@caru.bbb.org . Copies of the FTC complaint and settlement are available from the FTC's Website at http://www.ftc.gov. CARU's Guidelines are available at http://www.caru.org.

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The National Advertising Review Council (NARC) was formed in 1971 by the Association of National Advertisers, Inc. (ANA), the American Association of Advertising Agencies, Inc. (AAAA), the American Advertising Federation, Inc. (AAF), and the Council of Better Business Bureaus, Inc. (CBBB). Its purpose is to foster truth and accuracy in national advertising through voluntary self-regulation. NARC is the body that establishes the policies and procedures for the CBBB's National Advertising Division (NAD), the Children's Advertising Review Unit (CARU), and the National Advertising Review Board (NARB).

NAD and CARU are the investigative arms of the advertising industry's voluntary self-regulation program. Their casework results from competitive challenges from other advertisers, and also from self-monitoring traditional and new media, including the Internet. The National Advertising Review Board (NARB), the appeals body, is a peer group from which ad-hoc panels are selected to adjudicate those cases that are not resolved at the NAD/CARU level. This unique, self-regulatory system is funded entirely by the business community; CARU is financed by the children's advertising industry, while NAD/NARB's sole source of funding is derived from membership fees paid to the Council of Better Business Bureaus.