Posted on 10/06/2009 4:35:40 AM PDT by Red in Blue PA
The wild, wild Web, where anything goes, could become less wild this year if federal regulators have their way.
The Federal Trade Commission on Monday took steps to make product information and online reviews more accurate for consumers, regulating blogging for the first time and mandating that testimonials reflect typical results.
Under the new rules, which take effect Dec. 1, writers on the Web must clearly disclose any freebies or payments they get from companies for reviewing their products.
Testimonials will have to spell out what consumers should expect to experience with their products. Until now, companies just included disclaimers when results were out of the ordinary — such as a large weight loss — noting that the experience was not typical for all customers.
(Excerpt) Read more at courant.com ...
Congress can’t pass a law restricting free speech.
If Congress doesn’t have that power, how can it pass that power to the FTC?
It will be interesting to see whether these same rules apply to broadcast and cable infomericals and ‘reports’ within news programs.
For decades, the evening network news programs have run product infomercials under the guise of ‘news’.
These truly are scary times.
I thought the dems were in favor of “free speech”. Guess not!
Sorry. You’re being played like a cheap violin.
It doesn’t matter one single iota if the Dims or pubbies are in charge - government is like a Medusa who’s power keeps growing and reaching and stretching.
Congress was granted LIMITED power to regulate commerce. That means money changing hands.
But they were granted NO power to regulate private behavior. The Internet amounts to a universal telephone pole of sorts.
If you want to write something, and post it on your local phone pole, you are free to do so.
At least today.
So I get real tired of the threads that get posted here and the third entry is “Blame Obama” or some other type of horse shit.
When people have lost the understanding of the reach of government, then we are doomed.
When the first things people say when they have a problem is “What can the government do for me?”, then we are doomed.
When people keep playing the “It’s the conservatives versus the evil liberals” game, meanwhile getting sheared like sheep, AND NOT EVEN REALIZING IT, we are DAMN DOOMED!!
And don’t take this personally as we have had cordial and enjoyable discourse in the past. But we need to WAKE THE HELL UP!!
Can anybody honestly think electing 536 individuals every four years is gonna change the mindset of 3+ million federal employees?
The internet is all over the world. Is the FTC going regulate speech worldwide?
How are they going to do that? The U.S no longer controls the internet.
Next they will outlaw spam emails.
Some companies have a spam filter. I see the stats from the spam filter at work.
98% of email is spam. Not unusual for the filter to catch over 200,000 emails over a weekend and have only 2000-3000 be real.
I’m freakin embarrassed to be in the computer industry!
I left of the sarcasm tag, sorry. Where I work, the barracuda spam filer rocks.
Lol. Knew you were being sarcastic. Just though some folks would like to know the real numbers. Take care!
This gets a bit sticky...paid bloggers posting opinions as if they were true unsolicited opinions is deceitful at best, fradulent at worst, and isn’t much different than phony product endorsements aimed at fooling consumers.
Unfortunately when common sense and ethics fail, someone steps in with a new law.
Well, caveat emptor is written in an ancient language because it is an ancient idea.
And “You can’t always believe everything you read” is a time honored recommendation as well.
So if a couple people get screwed because they fall for something on a blog, I’m supposed to give up my rights?
What a perfect world it would be if we let government decide everything for us!
I guess “Consumer Reports” is dead meat.
Yeah, I guess there’s nothing wrong with government operatives disguising themselves as ordinary citizens and portraying government propoganda as grassroots opinion since you put it that way. /s
Like I said, when people employ deciet and fraud someone is going to demand a law such as mandatory disclosures.
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