A Little Bit About the FTC Ruling on Blogs

Our Nun of the Above has the details and analysis. Here's a tidbit.

Bloggers are now regulated by the Federal Trade Commission which just came out with a new law (effective on December 1, 2009 – Merry Christmas!) that cover those free products bloggers receive with no strings attached. Here’s the what it means for you:

• If you buy a product on your own and you write about it, then you don’t have any worries.


• If you get a free product and write about it, but the product doesn’t cost much, you rarely receive free products, and don’t have a wide readership, then you probably don’t have anything to worry about.


• If you get a free product and write about and regularly receive such products and have a wide readership and the item is used by your targeted audience, then you should disclose who sent you the product and that you got it for free.


• If BMW send you a free car with the hopes that you’ll write about it on your blog, then I would say that you must disclose the goodness of BMW.


• If someone pays you to write about the product, then absolutely you should disclose the payment.

There's lots more at the link. It's worth the visit.

I know lots of folks are all up in arms about this and are screaming about the First Amendment, but I don't see what the big deal is. Blogs are publications - they are produced so that any number of people can read them and give news, information and commentary. Lots of us gloat when the blogosphere scoops the MSM, like Breitbart did on the ACORN story. Glenn Reynolds has made that sort of thing a theme on his blog. Well, if we're going to play in the world, we need to abide by some of its rules.

I don't know the history of such disclosure laws, but I would bet their filled with abuses that led to all kinds of problems. Now that blogs are becoming the primary means for many of us to get our news and information, it's probably time we started living within those same rules.