federal trade commission Archives - Page 3 of 5

FTC Reassures Bloggers – Big Brother Isn’t Watching

The Blog of LegalTimes: “Bloggers of the world, relax – the Federal Trade Commission is not out to get you. That was the message from Mary Engle, associate director for advertising practices at the FTC’s Bureau of Consumer Protection. In a conference call for reporters today, Engle aimed to set the record straight after a flurry of news stories (not to mention blogs and tweets) about the FTC’s new advertising guidelines that were, as she put it, ‘all wrong. We are not going to be patrolling the blogosphere,’ she said. ‘We are not planning on investigating individual bloggers.'”

Breadth of New FTC Blogger Regs

Overlawyered.com: Walter Olson worries about the chilling effect the new FTC ad rule will have on people and the FTC’s selective enforcement of the regulation. I agree.

An editorial in today’s
[October 12, 2009] New York Times, despite a bit of concessionary fluff about not wanting ‘to hamstring the ability of bloggers and twitterers to report and comment about the world,’ enthusiastically endorses the new rules. It says not one word about the dangers of overbreadth, de minimis triviality, chilling effects, or selective enforcement. Nor (unlike the L.A. Times’s far more nuanced editorial) does it inform readers that the FTC is proposing in some respects to regulate social media more stringently than traditional media outlets such as the Times itself.

New FTC Rules Aim to Kill the Buzz on Blogs

Citizen Media Law Project: “On October 5, the Federal Trade Commission issued new guidelines (large pdf) on advertising involving endorsements and testimonials. The guidelines, which are due to go into effect on December 1, have caused a stir among bloggers, journalists, and new media types because they appear to place significant requirements and restrictions on blogs and social media. Most notably, they suggest that bloggers or other consumers who “endorse” a product or service online may be liable for civil penalties if they make false or unsubstantiated claims about a product or fail to disclose “material connections” between themselves and an advertiser.”

Do the FTC’s New Endorsement/Testimonial Rules Violate 47 USC 230?

Eric Goldman’s article starts, “In reading the FTC’s new rules on endorsements and testimonials in advertisements, I was struck by the FTC’s expansive vision of advertiser liability for third party-caused violations. In particular, the FTC apparently has made the same analytical error that the SEC recently made in the SEC’s proposal to hold securities issuers liable for third party content they link to. In my comments to the SEC, I explained that trying to hold a linker liable for content at the terminus of a link violates 47 USC 230.

Save Us From the Swag-Takers

Wall St. Journal: “The Federal Trade Commission, eager to protect us from shoddy media practices, issued new regulations this week requiring full disclosure from a variety of sneaky characters. Celebrities are on notice that if they sing the praises of product X while on Oprah’s couch, they had better mention how much the makers of product X are paying them, even if that payment is nothing more than a free sample in a goodie bag. The famous are not the FTC’s only target. The agency declared that “a blogger who receives cash or in-kind payment to review a product is considered an endorsement.” Sounds reasonable enough, until it becomes clear just how expansive the FTC’s concept of an “in-kind payment” is. The blogger who gets a free review copy of a book and writes up his opinion of it is now being labeled by the government a commercial endorser of the book—even if he pans it. This is not how traditional media are treated, which is what makes the new rules so significant: The government has weighed in on the contentious topic of whether bloggers are journalists—and delivered a resounding No.”