FTC: Bloggers must disclose payments for reviews

October 6, 2009

Today, reading some news from here and there. I found a very interesting new for bloggers. FTC: Bloggers must disclose payments for reviews

The Federal Trade Commission will require bloggers to clearly disclose any freebies or payments they get from companies for reviewing their products.
The FTC said its commissioners voted 4-0 to approve the final guidelines, which had been expected. Penalties include up to $11,000 in fines per violation.

This have provoked many webmasters opinions, most of them (if not all) are against this. Check webmasterworld if you want to join the conversation:

I think this is a huge waste of taxpayer money. There is zero way to determine that a blog post is “paid” for.

Would Matt Cutts entire blog have to have a disclaimer on it that he is speaking for Google?

What about Robert Scoble who is not employeed by Rackspace, but a loyal former microsoft employee? He just put out a blog post that was quite critical of Google Wave.

We signed Microsoft to a sponsorship in Vegas. I have liked Bing since it was live search, does that mean this whole post should be disclaimed?

What about any site that receives money from Google AdSense? If they remotely talk about tech, google, or the internet, should that whole site be disclaimed?

What I am saying, is that the Govt is looking into all but about 10% of the web will need to have a disclaimer on it.

This is a backwards step.

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I am a major fan of Izea and Ted Murphy. The man and the product are pure genius.
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Izea is a exhibitor at PubCon Las Vegas.
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Microsoft will be a major sponsor of PubCon Las Vegas
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Google is pulling back from conference support this year. Whoever thought Google would pull a Nixon and put the GooglePlex into bunker mode?
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Rackspace is probably going to be an exhibitor at pubcon las vegas. Robert Scoble now works for Rackspace.
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During a second grade straw poll in the fall of 1972, I voted for Richard Nixon.
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Under the advice of counsel, I deleted disclaimer #6
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…any Onion writers in the crowd? lol

How in heck are they going to police this anyway? A US blogger hosts in the UK for a UK-centric blog and puts up privacy on his domain reg. Who can catch that? Not anyone of the IQ level needed to pass this piece of work, that’s for sure.

Usually when the law is unclear, fuzzy and it can’t really be implemented, it WILL be used only against certain people, when needed. This is just a step back for freedom of expression.

Questions:

What are they going to ( attempt ) do about non US citizens blogging for money or goods ?
Understanding and having to accept the FTC ruling, even though we don’t agree w/ it, does anyone know how the rules affect previous “endorsed posts”?
So, we send out product samples as a normal part of marketing, and then when the unsolicited reviews come in (good or bad) there has to be a disclaimer attached?

The FTC notice:
http://www.ftc.gov/opa/2009/10/endortest.shtm

Public Comments:
http://www.ftc.gov/os/comments/endorsementguides2/index.shtm

It should be noted that some of the linked documents are in Adobe PDF format, and others are in “WPD” format.

I did not see any notice that the FTC uses or recommends Adobe or other software, although the recommendation is implicit in that fact that the federal agency uses the software and publishes link which indicate they do in their “blog like” format publishing dated announcements.

If the FTC receives free Adobe Reader software (which they do, just like everyone else), I beleive they must disclose that they have publsihed in Adobe format solely because they do not have to pay for it, (an “in kind” gift and one which surely contributes to their subliminal testimonial of the software’s use).

In conclusion, I think that is was done because there are many bloggers making positive reviews in some products that are scammers, unfortunately, there are many products and campaigns with many affiliate networks that offers high payouts for “trial offers” to mention one of them Neverblueads. Yes, the payouts are very good but I can say that 99% of the campaigns there are scams.