Watch out, Yelpers.

A blogger in Taiwan was dragged into court, initially sentenced to 30 days in prison and ultimately fined about $6,900 (US) for posting a critical restaurant review on her personal blog. The woman, identified by her last name only, complained of cockroach infestation, parking chaos and salty food, and the owner of the restaurant was displeased- and accused her of defamation:

After visiting a Taichung beef noodle restaurant in July 2008, where she had dried noodles and side dishes, Liu wrote that the restaurant served food that was too salty, the place was unsanitary because there were cockroaches and that the owner was a “bully” because he let customers park their cars haphazardly, leading to traffic jams.

The restaurant’s owner, surnamed Yang (楊), learned about Liu’s blog post from a regular customer, and filed charges against her, accusing her of defamation.

The Taichung District Court originally concluded that Liu’s review “exceeded reasonable bounds,” and handed down the 30 day sentence. Liu appealed, and was ordered to pay restitution of NT$200,000 for revenues lost due to her blog post. The court opined that characterizing the restaurant’s food as “salty” was unreasonable as Liu only sampled one dish, and a subsequent health inspection determined that conditions in the restaurant were not as unsanitary as the writer described.

Blogger Jailed, Fined For Critical Restaurant Review is a post from: The Inquisitr

A Staten Island woman has been stripped of her lifetime alimony payments of $850 a month after photos from her blog of the woman allegedly belly dancing at a swanky Manhattan venue were used in court by her ex-husband to contest a prior alimony judgement.

42-year-old Dorothy McGurk was awarded the marital home and the monthly payment after the court found originally that injuries from a 1997 car accident rendered the woman too physically fragile to work. But McGurk extensively blogged her belly-dancing activities, even presciently addressing the issue of her online activities coming back to haunt her. When a friend of Facebook asked after photos of an event, McGurk replied: “Gotta be careful what goes on line pookies. The ex would love to fry me with that…”

McGurk, who was ordered to pay more than $5,000 to her ex for lawyers fees in addition to the loss of the alimony, was chastised in court documents about her daily activities:

McGurk was also told to move out of the couple’s house, and her ex-husband was awarded 60% of its value because she “worked only two years of this 11-year marriage,” the judge wrote in her decision.

“The court credits husband’s testimony that wife slept all day or otherwise spent her day on the computer participating in Internet blogs,” the judge wrote.

McGurk claimed in court that the belly-dancing activities were recommended by a doctor, but on the stand, the doctor contradicted her testimony. Still, she denies ever engaging in the activities for which she was accused:

“I wish I could be a professional belly dancer, but it’s just not possible…The only thing I do are gentle exercises. One of them is undulating. What you do is suck in and flex the muscles of your belly,” she explained. She added that the photos on her blog show another woman dancing, though she refused to provide them to the News: “My girlfriend in front of me was belly-dancing with a sword, I was just standing behind her waving a veil.”

McGurk says she is appealing the decision pertaining to her ex-husband’s lawyer fees.

[NYP, Gothamist]

Blogging bellydancer loses alimony settlement over online postings is a post from: The Inquisitr

Ariana Huffington’s major cash out on the Huffington Post hasn’t been without incident, and the noisy group of unpaid sweatshop writers who provided much of the site’s multi-million dollar content haven’t shut up- they’ve filed a class action lawsuit.

The suit is headed by writer and union organizer Jonathan Tasini, himself an unpaid HuffPo contributor up until three days after the Aol buyout was announced. Tasini has tangled with media giants before, winning a settlement against the New York Times over the fate of freelancer content.

I posted a few weeks back about the ethical spot Huffington herself is in with the allegations- she often spouts off on TV, rightfully and righteously, about corporate exploitation of the middle and working class while herself gaining massive wealth off the unpaid contributions of writers. To argue no one is forced to spend hours researching and writing a HuffPo post is to lend credence to the idea no one is forced to work excessive hours in dangerous conditions with no paid time off or health coverage, wouldn’t you say?

Huffington recently penned the book Third World America, and in a lengthy screed, described the impetus behind the book:

It was the way that Washington rushed to the rescue of Wall Street but forgot about Main Street. It was the daily drumbeat of depressing statistics: One in five Americans unemployed or underemployed. One in nine families unable to make the minimum payment on their credit cards. One in eight mortgages in default or foreclosure. One in eight Americans on food stamps.

Upward mobility has always been at the center of the American Dream — a promise that if you work hard and play by the rules, you’ll do well, and your children will have the chance to do even better.

Well, that promise has been broken, and America’s middle class is under assault. The American Dream is becoming a nightmare.

What became clear while writing the book is that the decline of the middle class was no accident. Middle-class America didn’t suddenly lose its mojo. It was the result of tricks and traps. Tricks in the ways we financed our homes. Traps in the ways credit-card companies used hidden fees and fine print and skyrocketing interest rates to get their hands on our money, driving more and more people into debt.

The suit will definitely interest anyone who makes their living writing for the web, and could stand to change conditions for exploited freelancers in this fairly horrific job market. What do you think about the move to sue Huffington and her blog? Do you think the court will side with the writers or the media empire?

HuffPo, Aol, Arianna hit with lawsuit by unpaid bloggers is a post from: The Inquisitr

Part of a freakily true and larger gallery here.

Condensed soup cooking instructions is a post from: The Inquisitr

A New York City mommy blogger is being sued over $45,000 worth of dental work provided in exchange for a promise to write a “puff piece” about the dentist and dental offices.

According to documents filed in Manhattan Supreme Court, Lyss Stern of the Divalysscious Moms (yes, that’s really its name) parenting social network received the mind-boggling amount of dental services from the practice (the nature of the services was not revealed) but did not follow up with an article in December 2009, as agreed:

The suit filed in Manhattan Supreme Court says the article – about the practice’s “beginnings in the forefront of the cosmetic dental revolution” – never appeared.

And the $44,900 bill to the self-proclaimed “dentists to the stars” remains unpaid, the suit says.

“Elyssa Stern, as editor in chief of the New York Observer magazine, agreed to publish a four-page article in the December 2009 issue of the magazine profiling the achievements and advancements in the industry of [Lowenberg & Litcuchy],” the suit says.

Neither Stern nor a lawyer for the dental practice Lowenberg & Lituchy have commented to press about the lawsuit.

[NYDN via Gawker]

NYC ‘mommy blogger’ sued for not honoring dental barter is a post from: The Inquisitr

If there is one thing that is a constant in the tech industry it is the secretive ways of Apple’s PR machine and the trigger finger of their legal department to go after anyone talking about Apple products before their time – especially bloggers. So this report out of Gawker’s Valleywag that Greg Kumparak, an editor at the recently purchased Techcrunch, was spotted taking a job offer packet from an Apple rep.

The details of the sighting as related by Valleywag’s Ryan Tate:

I’m at a restaurant/brewery called BJ’s in Cupertino, which is pretty much right outside Apple HQ’s front door. About one hour ago, three Apple employees came in. You can always tell because of the badges they wear on those extending cable things… What was weird was who joined them: Greg Kumparak, who writes for TechCrunch. Recognized him from his videos.

I could not hear what was going on, but about 10 minutes into the meal one of the Apple employees handed him a folder with an Apple logo on it. From what i’ve seen before, I’m almost certain this was an offer packet. They spent about 30 minutes talking about it. I could be wrong, but it really looked like Apple was trying to court him for a job.

According to Tate neither TechCrunchAOL nor Kumparak would comment on the report other than the normal wishy-washy type stuff about how everyone is valued and would be missed.

Personally I don’t know why Apple would think it needs to hire anyone when they get all the free adoration and fist-pumping from John Gruber and Kumparak’s colleague MG Siegler.

image courtesy of Valleywag.

RUMOR MILL: TechCrunchAOL editor mulling job offer from Apple is a post from: The Inquisitr

ESPN panelist and Fanhouse.com writer Jay Mariotti was arrested overnight in LA, and the LA Times is reporting that the arrest was due to a “domestic incident” involving Mariotti’s girlfriend.

Details surrounding the incident were scant, but the LAT blog said:

He was booked on suspicion of a felony, but officials would not provide further details.

A source with knowledge of the case described it as a domestic disturbance charge involving his girlfriend. He was being held on $50,000 bail.

A later update indicated that the pair began arguing at a club in Santa Monica. The unspecified disagreement persisted when they arrived home to their apartment in Venice, and the dispute allegedly became physical, at which time police were called in. Mariotti is reportedly being held at the 77th Street station. The incident was not Mariotti’s first publicized brawl- in 2004, a feud between the controversial sports reporter and White Sox broadcaster Ken “the Hawk” Harrelson also came to blows and Mariotti suffered a broken nose.

Fanhouse.com has neither commented nor reported on Mariotti’s arrest.

[Image]

Sportswriter Jay Mariotti arrested in LA for ‘domestic incident’ is a post from: The Inquisitr

I first noticed this a month or so ago when I went to copy something from another blog to use as a quote. The copy went fine but when I pasted the section of text into the post that I was working there was suddenly a couple of blank lines and then this honkin’ huge assed link attached to what I had copied. The link had a nifty little message included telling the reader where the section of text had been copied from – like I was stealing it or something.

Look you idiots using this piece of crap service not only are you irritating the hell out of me by doing this (thereby making it less likely I will use you as a reference) but you are insinuating that I’m not intelligent enough to give proper attribution for your words.

Here’s a hint. Stop.It.

I understand that you might be a little upset with some doofuses out there who don’t honor this attribution thing that is pounded into the head of any decent blogger out there, but they are a minority. By using this service from some company called Tynt you are insulting those bloggers out there who do care about doing things the right way.

And if you think that I’m being a little over board on this well .. I’m not the only one who is feeling this way. both John Gruber from Daring Fireball and Mike Masnick from Techdirt have said much the same thing – albeit a little politer, but then I’m not in the mood to be polite about this.

As Gruber says in his post (see proper attribution at work):

It’s a bunch of user-hostile SEO bullshit.

Everyone knows how copy and paste works. You select text. You copy. When you paste, what you get is exactly what you selected. The core product of the “copy/paste company” is a service that breaks copy and paste.

The pitch from Tynt to publishers is that their clipboard jiggery-pokery allows publishers to track where text copied from their website is being used, on the assumption that whoever is pasting the text is leaving the Tynt-inserted attribution URL, with its gibberish-looking tracking ID. This is, I believe, a dubious assumption. Who, when they paste such text and find this “Read more:” attribution line appended, doesn’t just delete it (and wonder how it got there)?

Mike was a lot calmer:

As someone who does a fair bit of copying and pasting in writing this blog, I agree with Gruber that this is a bit of a nuisance. It’s not a hugely annoying thing, but it is annoying. If I’m copying and pasting from your website, I know what your website is, and I am already planning to link back to it. Adding that superfluous text is just annoying and basically forcing my computer to do something I did not ask it to do.

This isn’t happening on just small blogs either that are doing this but rather big name blogs like Wired, SFGate, New Yorker and TechCrunch (which by the way though an error every time).

Quit hijacking my cut and paste is a post from: The Inquisitr

Michael Arrington is “shaken” and has dismissed 17-year-old tech wunderkind Daniel Brusilovsky after information emerged that the kid was demanding shiny new tech toys in exchange for TechCrunch coverage.

In a post publicly flogging the “unnamed” minor (easily discerned due to his notability and some identifying information) Arrington says all of Brusilovsky’s contributions have been deleted and that he hopes the intern will develop into a person who can “be more welcome in this community.” Ouch. After rescinding Daniel’s seat at the cool kids table, Arrington goes on to link to the boy’s blog, where Brusilovsky apologizes for the kickback-demands and says the word “amazing” about 35 times. To imagine how this boy must be feeling, take any of your high school gym class mortifications and multiply it by about a million. Then post it on the internet.

Of course, I’d imagine that no matter how clever a high school kid sounds or how impressively tech savvy he is, it might be a good idea to implement some oversight before turning out his work to the tech blogosphere unchecked. It’s likely he had a pretty good idea of at least the basic integrity related issues that surround receiving kickbacks for placements, but when I was seventeen I wasn’t allowed to work the fryolater alone at Roy Rogers, much less disseminate information to a large pool of readers that could make or break a fledgling company.

Generally, when kids screw things up on a large scale, they get in some trouble, but ultimately the adults in charge of them have to answer too for not keeping a close enough eye on the little bastards. Seventeen is still seventeen, and if the internet had been anything more than AOL over a carrier pigeon dial-up connection when I was that age, I imagine I would have gotten up to scads more idiocy. What really sucks is that what probably didn’t feel like too bad of a decision at the time will probably follow this kid for far longer than he could have imagined.

[Image]

TechCrunch sacks 17-year-old intern for trading toys for coverage is a post from: The Inquisitr

Ha, ha.

Conservative blogger and entitled brat James O’Keefe became a darling of right-wing pundits after a series of satirical stunts culminating in the entrapment of ACORN staff across the country during a prank in which he posed as a pimp in some ACORN offices. Although information later came out suggesting O’Keefe’s footage was edited and he wasn’t exactly forthright in the campaign, the damage to the organization that works to swell voter ranks in poor areas was already done. O’Keefe blatantly admitted that wrongdoing in ACORN offices was not a concern of his, but rather the issue of brown people getting to vote:

James O’Keefe, one of the two filmmakers, said he went after ACORN because it registers minorities likely to vote against Republicans: ”Politicians are getting elected single-handedly due to this organization,” O’Keefe told The Washington Post. ”No one was holding this organization accountable.”

Now O’Keefe has landed himself and some cohorts in very hot water down in Louisiana, in an attempt to illegally wiretap Sen. Mary Landrieu’s office. An affadavit filed with the US Attorney’s Office describes the circumstances under which the “citizen journalist” was caught trying to bug the Senator’s phones:

O’Keefe allegedly filmed the men handling the main reception-area phone in the senator’s office with a cell-phone camera. The faux-repairmen, who are believed to have been attempting to tap the phones, then asked for access to the telephone closet to work on the main telephone system; asked for identification after being directed there, they said they had left their credentials in their vehicle.

The four men – O’Keefe, the two fake telephone repairman, and another alleged co-conspirator – are now “charged in a criminal complaint with entering federal property under false pretenses for the purpose of committing a felony, announced the United States Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Louisiana.” They could face up to ten years in prison and a fine of $250,000.

ACORN foe, blogger James O’Keefe, now facing 10 years in jail is a post from: The Inquisitr

The FTC has hinted in an interview with Daily Finance that the rules about fairly disclosing comps in blog posts doesn’t apply to people who happen to be awash in a sea of free goodies.

Yes, you, poor mommy blogger, must disclose a sample of baby wipes you didn’t pay for, but people who are important and better than you like Gwyneth Paltrow deserve nice things and thusly don’t have to abide by FTC disclosure rules. While celebrity endorsement has way more pull than your average blogging nobody, details like that don’t matter much to the FTC- Rich Cleland, associate director of the Federal Trade Commission’s ad division, explains the spotty logic behind the favoritism:

The average consumer, Cleland said, might well be aware that celebrities of Paltrow’s stature often receive free clothing, trips and other swag. “It is one of the issues where celebrity endorsements are a little different than person-on-the-street endorsements,” he said. “Would consumers understand that celebrities are always getting free stuff? It’s a factual question.”

Back in October when the new rules became a blogging issue, Steve suggested celebrities might be in trouble considering the new guidelines, but we can all rest easy. People like Gwyneth Paltrow can continue trading their heavily weighted words for “ridiculously lavish” vacations. Sadly, it seems the regulations do only exist to marginalize independent bloggers. Because unfair advantages cannot be allowed to stand.

[via Gawker]

FTC admits celebrities can blog for freebies, no disclosure needed is a post from: The Inquisitr

Since the very beginnings of blogs there has been this concept of bloggers freely linking out to other blogger’s posts when referenced in some way. The idea behind this is that besides adding substance to one’s own work we also gave value to the blogs that we linked to.

That value, now referred to in the most part as the Link Economy, came in several ways but primarily it was via the Google PageRank juice that linking out provided to other blogs and then back to you when other bloggers would link to things you might have written. The obvious thing here is that the more juice you acquired the better you would place in search results which helped bring in new readers.

It was a beneficial system for everyone all around but slowly as the blogosphere matured and blogs became a big business we began to see more deep linking (linking to your own material previously posted) and less linking out. Pageviews became the new value system where all that mattered is how many views you can get for each new post.

Sure Google juice still mattered but that could be achieved with carefully crafted SEO headlines and the constant pumping out of content regardless of it having any real inherent value of its own. So now we have blogs, or whole blog networks, whose whole intent is to increase the pageview cycle as much as they can and keep the deep linking going as much as they can per post.

Now the big discussion point is around the quality of content and how it is more like a meal at a fast food restaurant. I first wrote about one of the principal companies being blamed as being the MacDonalds of this emerging trend back in October. Then in the last week several of the big bloggers in the space have continued on and expanded on the subject.

One of those bloggers, Richard MacManus the driving force behind ReadWriteWeb chimed in today with another post where he talked about these content farms of content. However his point of view in the post was more oriented to following a previous thought he had raised about Google’s place, and responsibility, in all this.

He points to the aspect of the Link economy and how others seem to think that Google is doing just fine and that good content will always rise to the top – the mantra of all bloggers who seem to be blind to the changes happening. Richard’s take is that Google isn’t doing enough and that it really has a short window of time to make sure that the Link Economy – which it is in part responsible for creating – doesn’t head into a permanent depression.

While I agree that there are things that Google should be doing, I also feel that some of the responsibility for the current state of content lies with us – the bloggers – and especially with the big blogs who are quite happy to be spreading the grease that we are slipping and sliding in.

It all comes back to the dynamic and powerful economy that we all help create. The economy of links. The economy that gave us the power to make sure our voices could be heard above the white noise of traditional media no matter how big, or how small we were.

The moment we stop sharing our mutual wealth that we create organically through the power of the Link Economy we are in danger of losing everything that every single blogger, famous of not, has worked hard for over the last ten years since the birth of the blogosphere.

The more we relinquish the simple power that each and every single hyperlinked piece of text gives us as a whole; while we try desperately the models being set forth as success to follow, the quicker we transfer the power to new and old media that cares more about the dollar than the power of a unified voice.

As it stand right now the Link Economy is in danger of collapsing and with it the major part of the potential for Social Media to be a vehicle of real change. It is instead becoming a case of the same old business for the same old reasons. Money over people and the improvement of society.

In other words – the same ol’ same ol’ just a new set of players.

The fallacy of the Link Economy is a post from: The Inquisitr

While everyone on the web seems to have been captivated by BalloonBoy and the story’s love affair with cable news there has been another potential story waiting in the wings that could send BalloonBoy and family back to the minor leagues while they wait to be charged.

You see back on October 16 a woman and her young son were in line at an airport waiting to go through security when the TSA decided to separate the two of them – even though they are not suppose to. Now as usual in this era of  The Web the woman was a blogger and everything that transpired that day was recounted every tearful word by every heart-wrenching word  in a post on her blog.

Of course in the uproar that followed everyone came rushing to her side and cursing that big ol’ mean TSA in such a way that memories of the Motrin Affair all came flooding back. In addition of course this it the Twitter Age so the whole thing began to play out there as well. The only thing that was missing was the CNN truck in the front yard but apparently there is a writing deal in the works.

Sufficiently worked up?

Well, take a big chill pill folks because there is a very good chance that this is all bullshit. In other words it never happened. In fact in an unprecedented move the TSA got out in front of this right away by releasing  a video disproving the woman’s story. The TSA Blog followed that up by posting the nine additional videos of what happened but from different camera angles. Nine videos … damn folks talk about making sure that the truth is out there if you can get up off your ass long enough to actually watch them.

Now just as interesting as this story may have been on the surface it really is just another case of blogger sexism and we’re better than old media so we don’t have to play by the same rules game that I talked about last week at various places, including here. In this case we have a woman blogger who writes what could have been an incredibly incendiary post about something that the already hated TSA had done. It was guaranteed to get people inflamed and rushing to their keyboards to publish their god-given right opinion on the matter.

Which it did for a short while sending her blog pageviews from a reported normal of 200 per day to over 40,000 but then people started to question her version of the truth – especially in light of the TSA videos.

Now this is where we begin to see the wagons begin to circle in the blogging world as people who were calling the whole story into question began to be attacked by other bloggers. From outright stupidity of suggesting the TSA had doctored the videos through to bloggers suggesting the woman might have other problems and that we should take it easy on her.

The woman lied folks.

Yet bloggers are suggesting that she be given a pass on the whole thing. While some of the comments and posts about this whole story have condemned the woman even more of them are suggesting that we are getting all worked up over nothing and that we should just let it all blow over.

Excuse me but No. Bloggers are having a hard enough time trying to get and keep any kind of respect for what we do without someone lying about what could have been an extremely disastrous action by a Federal agency. As Paul O’Flaherty noted in a post

We are, for the most part, a pack of attention seeking wannabes. We have proven ourselves time and again to be willing to post information that is unresearched and uncorroborated. We’ve proven that we are willing to be shills for as little as $5. We’ve proven that we act as mob with knee jerk reactions. As of today we’ve also proven, not for the first or sadly the last time, that we are willing to lie just to get a bit of attention.

We can’t be trusted! Until we prove that we can be then we have no business claiming we should be taken seriously and treated the same.

If it had been a man who had pulled this stunt we’d all be handing him his balls on a platter by now. However it was a woman so this makes it different but really the only difference between the hoax this woman tried to pull over on us all and the one that will see BalloonBoy’s family in court is that CNN isn’t here – yet.

Bloggers can be such gutless wonders is a post from: The Inquisitr

As I delve further into this whole FTC mess and their new guidelines, which you can download and read all 81 pages yourself, one thing is clear – celebrities are screwed. Now whether or not the FTC guides were this blunt before I can’t speak to all I can do is point to what the document refers to as being new.

From the FTC document (page 19 and page 20)

The Commission is not persuaded that a celebrity endorser’s contractual obligation to
read the script he or she is given should confer immunity from liability for misrepresentations made in the course of that endorsement. The celebrity has decided to earn money by providing an endorsement. With that opportunity comes the responsibility for the celebrity or his or her legal representative to ensure in advance that the celebrity does not say something that does not “reflect [his or her] honest opinions, findings, beliefs, or experience.” See 16 CFR 255.1(a).

Furthermore, because celebrity endorsers are liable for what they say, not for the rest of the
advertisement, their lack of control over the final version of a commercial does not warrant the
immunity sought by the commenters. Nor are they required to become experts on the product or the industry, although they may have an obligation to make reasonable inquiries of the advertiser that there is an adequate basis for assertions that the script has them making.

So in other words all those celebrity endorsers of products or services can’t hide behind “they were just reading a script” as a protection from any potential lawsuits or fines from the FTC.

I wonder how many celeb lawyers are going over all those million dollar contracts right now hoping that they comply with the new guidelines?

FTC to celebs: you are responsible for what you’re hawking is a post from: The Inquisitr

See that line in the sand?

The one that was drawn yesterday by the FTC and their new <gag> guidelines </gag> about bloggers having to disclose any and all interactions with advertisers, book publishers, movie companies that might result in a review being written about a product, a movie or a book. The result of failing to do this could result in a fine of up to $11,000 for the blogger and or provider of the item to be reviewed.

In effect the grassroots of blogging just got weed whacked all to hell. Not to mention that there is a shitload of FUD being spread around and some important questions being left either unanswered or obfuscated by enough legalese to choke a horse.

Yesterday I asked some of those questions in a post here as well as making a few comments on blogs that were talking about the subject. One in particular was a post by Daniel Tunkelang, a blogger who I hold in high regard, were he was comparing the points raised by posts made by Jeff Jarvis and Google’s own Matt Cutts. Now to be clear here – Matt Cutts has come out solidly on the side of the FTC rulings which he made clear in a comment on Jeff Jarvis’ post:

As a Google engineer who has seen the damage done by fake blogs, sock puppets, and endless scams on the internet, I’m happy to take the opposite position: I think the FTC guidelines will make the web more useful and more trustworthy for consumers. Consumers don’t want to be shilled and they don’t want payola; they want a web that they can trust. The FTC guidelines just say that material connections should be disclosed. From having dealt with these issues over several years, I believe that will be a good thing for the web.

You can read the complete comment stream at Daniel’s blog but when I posted my comment I also pointed to the inequity over the fact that bloggers are being held to FTC guidelines for exactly the same thing that newspapers (traditional media) has been doing for years but without any FTC oversight.

And thus began the FUD courtesy of Matt Cutts in his reply to me:

“If the FTC thinks that this is a problem then why are not those in traditional media having to play by the same rules”

The same rules do apply to traditional media, and that’s how traditional media interpreted the updated guidelines. For example, the WSJ said “The [FTC] move is an effort to apply the same rules that already cover broadcast stations, newspapers and magazines to the Wild West marketplace of the World Wide Web.”

As for David Pogue on neither his private page full of links to his books and other assorted stuff – not a disclosure to be found and the same goes for his posts on The New York Times. Walter Mossberg has a single blanket “Statement of Ethics” which seems to work for traditional news journalists/reviewers but from what the FTC says this wouldn’t fly for independent bloggers. Kara Swisher also sports almost the exact same “Ethics Statement” as Walter but again this wouldn’t fly for indie bloggers who are expected to have a disclosure with every post that the FTC deems needs to have one.

The problem is that there is no FTC guidelines like the ones that have been enforced on bloggers and there has never been any. I have spent the last three hours scouring the web for even the slightest proof that the FTC has any purview over traditional media in the same way that they now have over independent bloggers (this will become an important distinction shortly).

In fact these are some of the quotes I have found that suggest otherwise Mr. Cutts

Never mind that TV, radio, and print publications have never had any such disclosure requirement (and still won’t).

Source: Business Insider – FTC Issues Ludicrous Blogger Disclosure Policy

The problem here is that mainstream media journalists receive goods for free on a regular basis, and only rarely is any relationship disclosed. There may be a line (mostly) between directly paid content and editorial in newspapers, but there is a wealth of other ways companies court attention from the mainstream media. It also doesn’t have to be goods: how regularly are journalists offered free trips to conferences and events, and at such events they might receive free goods, accommodation, food and even entertainment? It doesn’t even have to be that extreme: a free lunch or drinks could all be counted as indirect compensation by this criteria.

Source:  Duncan Riley – The Inquisitr – FTC targets bloggers, ignores newspapers

These new guidelines have nothing to do at all with established traditional media, and to a certain extent with the new media conglomerates e.g.: TechCrunch, Mashable, ReadWriteWeb, VentureBeat. This was made abundantly clear in a quote from Michael Cleland, assistant director for the FTC’s division of advertising practices in a post by Robert Wenzel of the Economic Policy Journal blog where a telephone interview between Edward Champion and Cleland.

Cleland informed me that the FTC’s main criteria is the degree of relationship between the advertiser and the blogger.
“The primary situation is where there’s a link to the sponsoring seller and the blogger,” said Cleland. And if a blogger repeatedly reviewed similar products (say, books or smartphones), then the FTC would raise an eyebrow if the blogger either held onto the product or there was any link to an advertisement.

As to why newspapers don’t need to be regulated the same way that scummy bloggers do comes out in this quote

But why shouldn’t a newspaper have to disclose about the many free books that it receives? According to Cleland, it was because a newspaper, as an institution, retains the ownership of a book. The newspaper then decides to assign the book to somebody on staff and therefore maintains the “ownership” of the book until the reviewer dispenses with it….

To which Robert Wenzel quite rightly points out the following

Note: Cleland is completely clueless if he thinks reviewers’ copies from mainstream media don’t end up with reviewers and then sold. All he has to do is walk into Strand’s bookstore in NYC. They have half their basement devoted to current books that have been sold to them by reviewers.

Another good point that was brought up by Jane over at Dear Author – what are the trigger points that will spark the FTC to come down on you like a ton of bricks?

As it is the FTC is making Twitter a prime example of where disclosure is going to be watched for but what about affiliate links. After all how many people who have reviewed books add a link to Amazon or Barnes and Noble that include affiliate links so that they can make a few bucks. Are we going to have to disclose those and any other affiliate links we might use – say for advertisings?

So regardless of the FUD that people like Matt Cutts like to put forth the fact is that traditional news organizations are not being regulated by the FTC. In fact it would also seem that major blog networks like the ones mentioned about may even be exempt from this type of watchdog behavior.

In all that I have read so far everything to do with the new FTC guidelines have to do with independent bloggers, much like when I write over at Shooting at Bubbles or at WinExtra but maybe not so much for here at The Inquisitr since it seems there is a dividing line between being a paid writer and being a writer sucking up for freebies.

Other than the FUD being thrown around I still haven’t seen any solid answers to my original questions from yesterday

1. Will these same ‘guidelines’ be applied against “traditional media” and if not – why not?

2. What exact form do these disclosure need to take? Per post? Per page? Per comment?

3. Is this retroactive? Does this mean that sites like Gizmodo, TechCrunch, Mashable, – well every single blog past and present will have to go through all their archives and add a disclaimer. Because we all know that posts that are even months or years old can resurface.

4.Will book publishers make signing a disclosure form a part of bloggers doing book reviews and is it really worth the effort at that point?

5. Does the country of origin of the writer matter as to whether a disclosure is included?

6. Does it matter the country of origin of where the blog served from come into play?

7 Does the country of origin of the product, service or book come into play at all?

No, all we are being left with is a threat to play nice by a totally different set of rules that either traditional media and possibly big blog networks or face the threat of being fined into oblivion.

Talk about stacking the deck.

Is the FTC being used to marginalize independent bloggers? is a post from: The Inquisitr

While the tech blogosphere likes to think of itself as the center of the blogging world it is really just another player in the much larger world of blogs. As a way to share information and encourage people to become involved there really isn’t much at this point that can surpass what blogs can bring to the table.

Involvement is a key part of what makes blogs ideal for letting people know what is going on and this is something that colleges and universities are beginning to understand. Dozens of colleges like Amherst, Bates, Carlton, Colby, Vassar, Wellesley, Yale, and M.I.T. are embracing student blogs to the point that many of them are prominently displayed on the college, or university’s main page.

Of them all the Massachusetts Institute of Technology has been a real front-runner where the blogs are posted predominately on the admissions homepage, as well as including hundreds of responses from prospective applicants – with no editing.

Not all colleges are willing to go to the extent that MIT has as they are still weight the benefits against any possible downsides. A lot of them are taking it slowly with plans to add student bloggers to pass along what student life is like on the campus.

“Blogs can certainly help humanize the process,” Mr. Rodriguez said. “The flip side is that a few anxious high school students may think and worry too much about what someone wrote on their blog, and present themselves in a slightly different way than who they really are. And there’s always the concern about the political ramifications, that bloggers may open up an issue or topic that starts something negative.”

But Mr. Lord of Haverford said prospective students’ interest in the summer bloggers calmed his worries.

“High school students read the blogs, and they come in and say ‘I can’t believe Haverford students get to do such interesting things with their summers,’ ” he said. “There’s no better way for students to learn about a college than from other students.”

Source: New York Times – M.I.T. Taking Student Blogs to Nth Degree

This year M.I.T had four open spots for student bloggers which saw 25 freshman applying for them and according to Mr. McOwen, director of communications at M.I.T.’s admissions office it was a hard choice to select the final four. While many might think that the writing will be more about the upside of university life it is not always such the case but surprisingly those in charge don’t shirk from those types of posts.

And not all posts are positive. Ms. Kim once wrote about how the resident advising system was making it impossible for her to move out of her housing — expressing enough irritation that the housing office requested that the admissions office take her post down. Officials refused, instead having the housing office post a rebuttal of her accusations; eventually, the system was changed.

A lot of the early adopters in technology and social media might like to say that blogging is old and passe in light of our current love affair with a 140 characters but the fact is that blogging is really coming into its own. When universities and colleges are able to see the upside from this kind of involvement I believe it only speaks to a long life for things like blogs.

image: Mark Wilson for The New York Times

Blogging – a new way to increase university admissions is a post from: The Inquisitr

With the launch of their Sidewiki toolbar addition Google’s “do no evil” mantra gets yet another slap upside the head. Even though it was only announced mid-morning the news of Google’s attempt to take over the conversations that are an integral; and important, part of our blogs Sidewiki is getting a lot of press from that self-same blogosphere.

The majority of the posts I have read have been centered mainly around the announcement itself and many are making note that this isn’t really anything new

The base idea of Sidewiki is old and has been tried before in different forms – like a decade ago by the name of Third Voice – but I’m curious if Google will give it a new push. – Google Blogoscoped

Over the years, numerous companies have offered services that allowed users to annotate web pages. Now, with a new project called SideWiki, Google is going to join the fray as well. – ReadWriteWeb

This is indeed an old idea that wasn’t a good one when it was first tried and still isn’t regardless of the fact – or especially because of the fact that it carries the Google brand name. On the surface the first thing to be concerned about this idea is how bad it will end up being yet another spam garden because trust me it will. The other problem comes in the basic acceptance of the service which as Philipp Lenssen suggests is more of a social one.

One of the bigger issues facing this type of app may not be technological, but social (and perhaps even legal): What happens if people loudly rant about examplestore.com, and the examplestore.com owner doesn’t feel like it’s fair that this is all written “on top of their homepage"? And what if some of the ranting people happen to be competitors of examplestore.com?

As with most Google products though the response has been mostly one of what this new service will bring to the web. The only one with any balls at the moment to come right out and say that this is a bad idea comes, surprisingly, from Jeff Jarvis.

Google just introduced Sidewiki, which enables anyone to comment on a page using Google’s toolbar.

I see danger.

Google is trying to take interactivity away from the source and centralize it. This isn’t like Disqus, which enables me to add comment functionality on my blog. It takes comments away from my blog and puts them on Google. That sets up Google in channel conflict vs me. It robs my site of much of its value (if the real conversation about WWGD? had occurred on Google instead of at Buzzmachine, how does that help me?). On a practical level, only people who use the Google Toolbar will see the comments left using it and so it bifurcates the conversation and puts some of it behind a hedge. Ethically, this is like other services that tried to frame a source’s content or that tried to add advertising to a site via a browser

I agree whole-heartily with Jeff one this one. Sidewiki is nothing short of an attempt by Google to take control of the conversations that happen on blogs. Additionally they are forcing bloggers to either install their toolbar or move to the Chrome browser that will have Sidewiki support built into it.

Sorry but using products is a choice and no company has the right to force me to use their products just so I can keep in contact with what my readers are saying. In effect Google is inserting themselves between the reader and the blogger. In the process, as noted by Martin Bryant at The Next Web, they are giving themselves yet another potential advertising revenue stream. Sure they are saying that there is no plan to monetize the service “right now” but that isn’t the same thing as saying emphatically that they won’t be.

In an interview with Joseph Tartakoff at paidContent Caesar Sengupta and Aseem Sood, Google product managers, said a couple of things that I disagree with. The first is this little gem

Sengupta tells us [paidContent that Sidewiki is “complimentary” since it provides additional features

This is bullshit plain and simple. Sidewiki might have some interesting features but the service doesn’t add anything to blogs that benefit the blogger. In fact it takes away one of the most important parts of a blog – the conversation – and locks it on the Google servers. As problematic as blog commenting systems might be, even with 3rd party options like Disqus, JS-Kit, and Intense Debate, the conversation content remains where it is suppose to – on our blogs.

The second point I have a big problem with is from Aseem Sood where he says:

“Right now, our goal honestly is to increase the engagement of users on the web,”

Sure as long as that engagement benefits Google because Sidewiki does nothing to benefit bloggers except add more overhead to their blogs and time.

Sorry but this idea stinks to high heaven and like Jeff Jarvis says: “This is wrong for the internet and, I’ll predict, bad PR for Google”.

hat tip to Frederic Lardinois at ReadWriteWeb for the YouTube link

Google’s Sidewiki is a bad idea – very bad is a post from: The Inquisitr

And reminds us all know that the internet is here to stay, as soon as we stop buffering.

[Via Mashable]

Dr. Horrible’s Sing Along Blog crashes the Emmys is a post from: The Inquisitr

Just in case you missed this one the background is the following:

– an anonymous blogger running a blog on Google’s Blogger.com called “Skanks of NYC” posts a picture of model Liskula Cohen partying at a bar in a sexually suggestive pose with a caption “psychotic, lying, whoring … skank”

- Cohen gets her panties in a bunch and demands that Google release the name of the blogger.

- Google refuses

- Cohen sues Google and …. wins.

- Google hands over the user information.

- Cohen plans on suing the blogger for defamation.

Now granted you can have your anonymity ripped from you if you truly defame someone but come on – since when is calling anyone a skank considered to be defamatory by any stretch of the imagination. The fact that some judge thinks calling a partying woman a skank is somehow defamatory makes me really hope that they are responsible for making really life and death decisions.

Calling a woman a skank might be rude and heartless and say more about the person doing the name calling but it is nowhere near being defamatory. Not to mention the fact that if the person being called a skank is so easily offended by a pretty lame insult then they need some professional help.

Unfortunately though the stupidity of the story doesn’t stop there.

In light of her victory in getting Google to turn over the anonymous blogger’s information David Coursey over at PC World decides that Cohen is a “hero” and that all those spineless anonymous bloggers now need to think twice before spewing their vile opinion upon the Internet.

Hero?

Are you serious?

She might be beautiful and she might be a rich model but nothing she has done in this matter comes anywhere near the level that would deserve her being called a hero. If anything Coursey continues the current trend of cheapening the ideals that “being a hero” stands for and insult every person out there who deserves to be call a hero.

This whole thing is stupid on many levels not to mention a little frightening that it has reached a point where the First Amendment can be tossed aside so easily – because someone suffered detrimental harm over being called a … skank.

Since when is calling someone a skank considered defamatory? is a post from: The Inquisitr

Kind of scary looking blogger Marcy Wheeler raised a few eyebrows by using a common euphemism for oral sex on a MSNBC segment.

Marcy’s expressing frustration at lack of investigation into the recent news that Dick Cheney supressed a whole frickload of information from the POTUS and Congress, and she invokes the whole “Clinton got impeached for a BJ” argument. The anchors quickly begin tripping over themselves to apologize on Marcy’s behalf but the damage has already been done. Won’t someone please think of the children?!?

Girl, you’re making us all look like we don’t have home-training or manners!

(Video) Blogger, please… don’t say BJ on the news is a post from: The Inquisitr