When it comes to the Web and the Internet as a whole nothing polarizes people, companies and organization quicker that the subject of Net Neutrality. As the FTC progresses through developing its proposals for regulations meant to guarantee some sort of Net Neutrality in the U.S. everyone is trying to exert whatever influence they might have on those proposals.

Yesterday the Electronic Freedom Foundation (EFF) issued a call to arms for people to let the FTC know that any messing with potential regulations by financial impacted companies – especially when it comes to copyrights – isn’t acceptable.

What has the EFF up in arms specifically is what they see as a loophole in the proposed regulations that would require ISPs to become copyright cops. From the email sent out by the EFF:

Tell the FCC: Don’t let Hollywood hijack the Internet

Last fall, the Federal Communications Commission proposed rules for “Net Neutrality” – a set of regulations intended to help innovation and free speech continue to thrive on the Internet.

Buried in the FCC’s rules is a deeply problematic loophole. Open Internet principles, the FCC writes, “do not … apply to activities such as the unlawful distribution of copyrighted works.”

For years, the entertainment industry has used that innocent-sounding phrase – “unlawful distribution of copyrighted works” – to pressure Internet service providers around the world to act as copyright cops – to surveil the Internet for supposed copyright violations, and then censor or punish the accused users.

From the beginning, a central goal of the Net Neutrality movement has been to prevent corporations from interfering with the Internet in this way – so why does the FCC’s version of Net Neutrality specifically allow them to do so?

Source: Network World

There is no doubt that the issue has made for some strange bedfellows and also the requisite backroom dealings and threats. Even companies like Google and Verizon who issued a joint statement on the matter don’t always agree when it comes to the meat of the matter.

They ticked through a variety of things they agree on, such as “encouraging investment and innovation of broadband network” and “providing users with information.”

Sadly, the lawyers who’ve been racking up sizeable billable hours while crafting missives to the FCC couldn’t find common ground on everything. “We continue to disagree on some of these matters,” the companies acknowledged.

That’s a bit of an understatement, judging from the voluminous filings each company made with the agency yesterday.(Google = 98 pages; Verizon = 139 pages)
Noting that the FCC’s proposed net neutrality rules would apply to Internet providers, not companies that offer services over the Internet, Verizon wrote that “it is no mystery, after all, why dominant Internet incumbents such as Google are among the strongest proponents of net neutrality rules – their incentive is to lock in place through regulation advantages they have established for themselves based on today’s predominant business models.”

Google, meanwhile, didn’t slam Verizon by name in its FCC filing, although it noted it believes (unlike Verizon) that wireless networks should be covered by net neutrality rules and that broadband providers should be subject to more oversight.

“At their core, today’s broadband networks are the result of government-sanctioned
monopolies, the grant of public benefits and their attendant enormous market advantages and economies of scale, scope and ubiquity. The government should have a role to ensure that all of these public contributions are put toward serving the public interest,” Google wrote.

Source: Wall Street Journal

It should come as no surprise either that supposedly autonomous agencies are also coming out on both sides of the issues but what is more than interesting as the team at Ars Technica found out is when you start looking at the funding of these agencies and which side of the issue they line up with.

One just has to look to AT&T and their arguing against the FTC involvement with Net Neutrality and then examine some rather unlikely submissions to the FTC hearings to see the match up.

• Kankakee County Farm Bureau
  • but reps from the Farm Bureau, AT&T, and Comcast sit together on the local Chamber of Commerce Government Affairs Committee
• Erie Neighborhood House
  • It also received $10,000-$25,000 from Comcast in 2009, along with $5,000-$10,000 from AT&T Illinois, according to its annual report.
• Downtown Springfield Inc
  • AT&T is a member of the group.
• Big Brothers/Big Sisters of Will and Grundy Counties
  • The Big Brothers/Big Sisters, especially at the local level, aren’t known for having opinions of the innovation effects of government policies in the telecommunications sector… but they do take money from AT&T
• Ministerial Alliance Against the Digital Divide
• Schaumberg Business Association
• Mayor of Chicago

Now while tech companies in of themselves might not seem to have much of a stake in this process the fact is that for many of them Net Neutrality is an important issue.  Google has come out obviously on the side of the users in the issue even though net neutrality would benefit them as well (see video at the end of the post for more on this).

The Internet was designed to empower users. Its open, “end-to-end” architecture means that users – not network providers or anyone else – decide what succeeds or fails online. It’s a formula that has worked incredibly well, resulting in mind blowing innovation, incredible investment, and more consumer choice than ever.

Source: Google’s Official Public Policy Blog

Then thrre are tech companies that could be impacted by any decisions made by the FTC. One such company is Skype:

Evidence suggests that carriers have the incentive and ability to harm innovation in the real-time communications application market, such as that made possible by Skype, either by outright blocking or more subtle forms of discrimination. Because these applications offer consumers additional choice and savings, they should not be delayed, obstructed or throttled by broadband access providers.

Source: GigaOM

Of course this is all happening during the time when the entertainment industry and their many trade groups are pushing hard, on a global level, for the adoption of ACTA. It has even gotten to the level where the US is using trade threats to force other countries to accept trade agreements that either include ACTA or mimic it.

Costa Rica is discovering this type of negotiating when it comes to trying to get final approval of the Central American Free Trade Agreement pushed through Congress

Reports from Costa Rica indicate that final approval of the Central American Free Trade Agreement with the United States is languishing in the Legislative Assembly due to concerns over the copyright provisions.  The CAFTA copyright provisions are similar to those found in the other major U.S. trade agreements concluded in recent years: DMCA-style protections, ISP liability, and copyright term extension are all part of the package.

In this case, it is the responses that are most noteworthy. Within Costa Rica, the article reports that the copyright provisions in the trade treaty have set off a wave of student protests over what it means for education.  Meanwhile, health officials are concerned that the provisions on pharmaceutical products “would bankrupt the public health system.” The response from the U.S. is important as well.  It is delaying market access to sugar from the developing country until the copyright reforms are in place.  Until that time, Costa Rican sugar producers will not be able to sell their product in the U.S.

Source: Professor Michael Geist

At the root of all these discussions going on, whether it be US centric Net Neutrality regulations to trade negotiations with the US, the wholesale gutting of existing copyright laws; both in the US and sovereign countries, in order to benefit the US entertainment industry.

image via vBeta.pl

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]

A group that advocates for internet privacy has filed a complaint (PDF) with the Federal Trade Commission over Facebook’s new wide-ranging recent privacy changes.

Calling the action “the most significant case now before the Federal Trade Commission,” the Electronic Privacy Information Center, or EPIC, said in a statement:

More than 100 million people in the United States subscribe to the Facebook service. The company should not be allowed to turn down the privacy dial on so many American consumers.

The EPIC complaint alleges that far more data belonging to users is available both generally and to third-party Facebook app developers and cites massive outrage and coverage of the move in the media and in the blogosphere. Amusingly, the complaint also references the newly created Facebook groups “Against The New Facebook Privacy Settings!” and “Facebook! Fix the Privacy Settings.”

EPIC has been joined in the complaint by American Library Association, the Consumer Federation of America and the Center for Digital Democracy.

One of the big topics today that I have picked up from my morning reading is the news that Amazon is going to help you become a Twitter spammer.

Yup now you will be able to populate your Twitter stream with links to items in the Amazon stores that you can sell as an affiliate and make money. Now to be sure there are probably a great number of people who will be totally ethical and above board when it comes to posting this type of stuff to their Twitter stream.

However I am willing to go out on a limb here and say that this kind of transparency will be extremely rare.

This idea is ripe for misuse and will do nothing more than provide a mechanism for affiliate marketers to start flooding Twitter with seemingly legitimate offers disguised as friendly recommendations. I wouldn’t be surprised if by the end of the week that this takes off to the point that previous hijacking of accounts will start happening again with links to Amazon products being the end game for supplied links.

The other big problem, which services like Magpie and SponsoredTweets have addressed is the matter of disclosure – especially with the upcoming changes as proposed by the FTC. In what I have read so far nothing is mentioned about the requirement of some sort of disclosure being a requirement of posting  Amazon affiliate links to Twitter. In fact by all appearances you are totally left to your own ethics as to how you write up the Twitter message in your affiliate link message.

As Sarah Parez quite rightly pointed out in her post about this on ReadWriteWeb this is becoming nothing more that Twitter product placement or as she puts it – a hidden advertisement

The problem with this sort of “hidden” advertising, though, is exactly that: it’s hidden. This is the internet’s version of “product placement” – subtle advertising in plain sight yet never clearly identified as such. Was your favorite TV star using a Macbook? Was he drinking a Coke? Already commonplace in Hollywood, these almost subliminal advertising messages permeate our consciousness every time we turn on the TV. Now that same sort of hidden ad will soon show up in the Twitter streams of your favorite tweeters.

Sorry but with no guidance regarding disclosure, or even making it a requirement, this new idea for Amazon is exactly the reason why the FTC is getting involved. So much for self-regulation.

The Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) has gone into bat on the side of bloggers, calling for the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to withdraw its new rules forcing disclosure of financial relationships on blogs.

The IAB says that the rules “unfairly and unconstitutionally” impose penalties on online media for practices, while exempting traditional media. Randall Rothenberg, the IAB’s president and CEO, says the FTC’s distinction between offline media and online media is “constitutionally dubious” by invoking the First Amendment right to free speech. Release

“What concerns us the most in these revisions is that the Internet, the cheapest, most widely accessible communications medium ever invented, would have less freedom than other media,” said Mr. Rothenberg, “These revisions are punitive to the online world and unfairly distinguish between the same speech, based on the medium in which it is delivered. The practices have long been afforded strong First Amendment protections in traditional media outlets, but the Commission is saying that the same speech deserves fewer Constitutional protections online. I urge the Commission to retract the current set of Guides and to commence a fair and open process in order to develop a roadmap by which responsible online actors can engage with consumers and continue to provide the invaluable content and services that have so transformed people’s lives.”

On the subject of review copies, of which “there is a longstanding practice in traditional media of providing products and services to journalists including freelancers, for the purpose of reviews” he writes “They—and we—are not arguing that bloggers and social media be treated differently than incumbent media. After all, most newspapers, magazines, radio stations and television networks, in recognition that Americans are embracing new forms of social communications, have established their own blogs, boards, Facebook pages, Twitter feeds, and the like. Rather, we’re saying the new conversational media should be accorded the same rights and freedoms as other communications channels.”

While a lot of attention surrounding the new guidelines being issued by the FTC is regarding bloggers there is also another who section of advertisers that is going to get hit hard by these new guidelines. Ignoring the fact for now that newspapers are being given a clear path to maintain their current status quo of self-regulation guerilla marketers are going to have a very hard time doing business under these guidelines.

For those not familiar with the term guerilla marketing it is a type of marketing where for example sake you are sitting at the bar having a nice cold beer and some-one you don’t know sits down beside you and you both start talking about brands of beer and why you like certain ones. This person beside you starts really talking up the brand of beer, one you’ve probably never tried because it’s new, their are drinking and then offers to buy you one, or two.

That is what is commonly referred to as guerilla marketing.

To the FTC this type of advertising would require full disclosure

A young man signs up to be part of a “street team” program in which points
are awarded each time a team member talks to his or her friends about a particular
advertiser’s products. Team members can then exchange their points for prizes, such as
concert tickets or electronics. These incentives would materially affect the weight or
credibility of the team member’s endorsements. They should be clearly and
conspicuously disclosed, and the advertiser should take steps to ensure that these
disclosures are being provided.

(page 81)

As I said earlier the only medium not covered by any of these new guidelines is the traditional print media – anyone else … well you’re fair game.

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?

With the US Federal Trade Commission now forcing bloggers to disclose anything that may have any influence over what they are writing, many are now offering their FTC disclosure upfront.

Mark Rizzn Hopkins (disclosure, Mark occasionally writes a post here) and Mark Cuban are two disclosures I’ve just read. Although I’m not American, this site now lives on the Rackspace Cloud in possibly multiple data centers in the United States so may be exposed to US law, so just to be on the safe side, here’s mine.

Mineral Sands

My wife, as a former employee of Iluka Resources still has a number of shares in the company. Those shares were given to employees partially for free. Although those shares aren’t in my name, I may be influenced by her having them.

Iluka is the largest producer of zircon in the world, with an approximate market share of 34% and the second largest producer of titanium dioxide minerals with an approximate market share of 18%. Zirconium metal is used in nuclear reactors due to its neutron absorption properties, and many of our readers in the United States get their power from nuclear energy. The more they read, the more Zircon is needed, and the more we profit. Titanium dioxide is used in paint, and I’ve previously encouraged people to paint things on my person blog.

Water

My wife currently works for the main supplier of water where we live (name not disclosed for privacy reasons.) I drink piles of the stuff every day as I write this site, although we don’t get a subsidy for it. However, I recently attended an open day at a reservoir where I was given two sausage sandwiches. Not only where they delicious, they were free. If I advocate drinking water, there may be a direct and indirect influence

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.

As we covered earlier, the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has decided to crack down on “blogger endorsements” through a new set of rules that requires bloggers to disclose any freebie or financial relationship with the topic being blogged about.

Unlike many in the blogosphere I actually support the idea that such interests should be disclosed (the nanny state implications aside), and think in part that the implementation of the rules is a positive one. Where my blood boils however is in the scope of the rules: specifically that it extends to blogs but not heritage media.

The ruling means that blogs are treated differently to newspapers or magazines, despite the important role new media is taking in picking up the slack as old media slowly dies off. The ruling essentially creates two classes of media: one that is beyond the standard set by the FTC, and one that is bound by it.

What I’ve yet to find is any good argument as to why old and new media should be treated differently. The rise of “payola” in blogging isn’t something that has miraculously emerged overnight, but is instead simply a sign of maturity in the sector in that it is following the lead of old media before it.

Don’t believe me? Buy a magazine on just about any topic. I recently read an American movie magazine while waiting for a Pizza (I don’t buy magazines, so it’s the only time I’d read one), and the paid relationship between advertisers and editorial was so blatant as to be scary. In this magazine there was 8 whole pages of editorial dedicated to positive spin for a movie that had been panned by critics. On three other pages were paid ads for the exact same movie (two for the movie, one for the computer game spinoff.) The same Hollywood movie company had a pile of other ads scattered throughout the magazine as well.

That’s just one example, but it is a common one in many different topic areas. Whether you agree that this should be allowed is academic and an argument I don’t particularly seek to have here, but likewise how is it fair in a democracy that different sets of rules are in play if you publish offline or online?

The conspiracy theorists may well suggest that the FTC ruling is an attempt to give old media an unfair advantage over new media, and while that’s pushing the line as these things go, you can’t help but think that there might be some truth in it.

It is a sad day for democracy in America where the voice of the people is imposed with rules that the voice of those with power and money are not. Change you can believe in has become bite the hand that got you to where you are because you want to curry favor with the big end of town.

As of today the FTC has made it perfectly clear – bloggers are a bunch of scum who will do everything possible to suck in their readers to purchase products that they have been prompted to say are the best thing since sliced bread because the company who gave them the product expects them to. We as bloggers apparently have no mind of our owns and can easily be swayed by some humping dog USB or a laptop that we wouldn’t normally be able to spend a thousand or two to buy.

It doesn’t matter if we write something cool about Field Notes, the latest cookie-cutter game, of a cutting edge smartphone. It only matters that we wrote something about that product. It doesn’t matter that we called out a product for being the piece of crap that it is or if it is actually something that helps us in our daily computing life. We’re just stupid and need to be told that our readers are stupid as well and that without the FTC stepping in and letting our readers know that bloggers are evil because we didn’t let them know we might have gotten something for free.

Of course our journalistic betters (at least in the eyes of the FTC) don’t have to follow the same <cough> guidelines </cough> that are being forced up bloggers. When was the last time that you heard of a movie review letting their readers know that they had been given tickets to the hottest shows or that unlike the rest of the rubes don’t wait in all those same line-ups. Not to mention that until recently people like Pogue, Mossberg or any other number of tech reviews for newspapers declared the fact that they got freebies to reviews. I was only since bloggers started suggesting that if this was the way it was to be or them then it should be the same for everyone,

In a comment to a post by Jeff Jarvis (well worth the read) Matt Cutts of Google’s Spam team had the audacity to agree with the move by the FTC. His reasoning – all those evil bloggers polluting the Google stream:

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.

Please. This is a fine example of FUD and shifting the responsibility of trying to keep the garbage out of the web. Nothing, absolutely nothing in the FTC pointed attack against bloggers will have any effect against sploggers and the like. You want to clean up that mess then Google should be looking a lot closer to home especially consider that the majority of all that blog spam can be traced back to Blogger.com – which by the way is owned by Google.

Sorry Matt but that is just a bullshit argument pure and simple. Threatening bloggers, and their advertisers with a $11,000 fine isn’t going to do a single thing to stop that kind of crap polluting the blogosphere.

As long as the FTC is willing to let the newspaper industry to self-regulate itself then that should also be good enough for bloggers since in many cases I would suggest that career bloggers have as much ethics or even more more than a lot of journalist who are probably laughing their ass off right now about how those asshole bloggers have finally gotten their comeuppance.

Then we have real jerk-offs like Jake Ellis, a spokesman for the Consumer Federation of America, who don’t think that the FTC has gone far enough. It is his opinion that bloggers would be gone after and have as much pressure applied on them as possible because of course we all know that our opinion is something that our long time readers aren’t smart enough to see as the scam that it is.

The really sad part of this is the fact that there are some big successful blogs who think this move is just peachy because unlike them the rest of the blogosphere is nothing but unscrupulous bloggers that do nothing but deceive their readers in order to get all those goodies.

Here’s some questions though that still remain to be answered and if they aren’t then this whole thing is nothing more than a power grab and a way to try and shut up one of the largest growing forms of journalism this world has seen

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 publisher make signing a discloser 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?

Not only does something like this draconian move by the FTC insinuate that all bloggers are stupid and evil with no sense of ethics but it also makes out readers out to be just as stupid or not able to make an intelligent decision that they are being screwed with.

In the end these laws will do nothing to change the landscape because for as long as there has been people there has been stupid people who will be gullible enough to fall for anything.

Here is a round-up of some of the conversation going on about this travesty

FTC Publishes Final Guides Governing Endorsements, Testimonials

FTC to Bloggers: Disclose Freebies or Face $11,000 Fine – ReadWriteWeb

FTC Values Sponsored Conversations at $11,000 Apiece. – TechCrunch

FTC Launches New Guidelines For Blogs – StarterTech

FTC Media Roundup: The Good, the Bad and the Indifferent – SiliconANGLE

FTC says bloggers must disclose payments and freebies when reviewing products or risk being fined $16,000 – Orlando Sentinel

Bloggers Must Disclose Payments for Reviews – New York Times

FTC to Fine Bloggers up to $11,000 for Not Disclosing Payments – Mashable

FTC regulates our speech – Jeff Jarvis

[Special] CobWEBs Daily Podcast: Anyone thinking the FTC blogger rules are a good thing are fuckwads – Shooting at Bubbles

In response to the negative publicity surrounding “mommy bloggers” and kick backs, a group of mommy bloggers have banded together to launch an honesty seal program.

Led by Liz Gumbinner, Blog With Integrity has signed up nearly 300 bloggers who have pledged to disclose all “material relationships, policies and business practices,” and clearly differentiate editorial, advertorial and advertising according to Paid Content. Bloggers display the Blog With Integrity badge on their sites as a trust mark.

It’s a nice effort and I do wish the group the best, however in researching this post I naturally hit Gumbinner’s site and found one of the most hilarious posts on the topic I’ve ever read. Some highlights from “The Year That Shame Died.”

Much to my surprise however, what turned out to be the problem at BlogHer was not how the marketers acted, but how so many bloggers acted. Without pulling punches, I will say it was shameful….

The countless bloggers who combed the expo floor with the purpose of asking marketers for expensive free items (and of course, an identical one to giveaway to a reader).

The shameless swag frenzies at parties that led to a blogger with an arm so bruised she looked like a heroin addict, and a baby in a carrier who endured his first ever sharp elbow to the head

I won’t spoil it all, you can read the full post here, but it does highlight the problem Gumbinner faces: large numbers of mommy bloggers are greedy and can’t be trusted. Mars might be easier to colonize than trying to tame the mob that is blog mommy rule.

The US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is preparing to launch new guidelines that will legally force disclosure on blog posts that involve “compensation” to the blogger writing it.

The guidelines, coming primarily in response to paid posting, are said to be needed in an era when consumers increasingly turn to blogs for information about the goods and services they buy. “The presumption is that we can apply traditional advertising principles like transparency and accountability to social media the same way as it would apply to traditional media,” said a representative for the FTC.

While in principle it’s a sound idea, and one that most people wouldn’t oppose, it’s the application that is anything but just, because it makes no attempt to strictly enforce the same rules on mainstream media outlets, and specifically newspapers, despite the suggestion from the FTC that those outlets are currently operating under higher standards.

Take this example from BusinessWeek:

Readers of Adventures in Babywearing, a blog for parents, got an up-close look at the Ergo, a $135 embroidered baby carrier in a shade called “organic blue” in a May 14 post on the site…”The Ergo truly is now my first choice for long-term wear as well as nursing and doing chores around the house,” she wrote.

Money can’t buy that kind of advertising for Maui (Hawaii)-based ERGObaby. Or can it? [The blogger] wrote in her blog [that] the company sent the carrier free, along with a matching pouch and backpack.

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. So why is it that bloggers receiving similar deals require Government intervention?

Perhaps there is a hidden agenda. Maybe this isn’t really about disclosure, but more about protecting perks for mainstream media journalists exclusively? Any attempt to regulate the blogosphere without seeking to strictly enforce the same rules on the mainstream media can only be seen as an attack on new media in favor of the old media. More change we can believe in from the Obama Administration.

The Federal Trade Commission’s revamped code (which is merely a suggestion that companies can choose to accept or ignore) now asks Web services to make a point of informing users up-front that their data could be collected during searches, then giving them an option to opt-out. The new document also advises ISPs and mobile service providers to give users a full rundown of what they’re collecting and why.

“You may have a contract with your ISP and everywhere you go, they can be collecting information on you,” the FTC says.

Privacy advocates are already blasting the efforts, saying the guidelines don’t do enough to protect consumers. Some are calling for full-fledged laws surrounding privacy standards.

“The time for baby steps to protect online privacy is long past,” says an exec from the Center for Digital Democracy in Washington. “The commission failed to protect consumers here.”

So what do you think? Should the government get involved and regulate online privacy? Or should Web companies continue to govern themselves, as they do now?

Poll below.

Well yesterday, the FTC wone a preliminary legal victory against one of these spam gangs that they say account for one third of all spam emails being sent out. HerbalKing the target of the legal action apparently sent out billions of email messages per day pushing such things as pharmaceutical drug, herbal pills and replica watches. Brad Stone of the New York Times tells of Marshal Software; a security firm who worked with the FTC, who estimated that one of the group’s main botnets was capable of pumping out 10 billion email messages a day.

As for making money from spam the FTC investigators who monitored the group’s finances said that it had cleared $400,000 in Visa charges in one month alone. Who says being a slime bucket doesn’t pay eh.

While the FTC would like to believe that this bust will make a dent; however small, in the deluge of spam we get everyday Graham Cluley from Sophos is a little more realistic about it

 

“It wouldn’t be a surprise if people don’t notice any difference in their in-box tomorrow morning.”

 

Yup that pretty well sums up my inbox this morning – how about you?