Academic

IN THE LATEST HARVARD LAW REVIEW, a piece on the FTC?s blogger regulations: Recently, the Federal?

By Glenn Reynolds

IN THE LATEST HARVARD LAW REVIEW, a piece on the FTC’s blogger regulations:

Recently, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) revised their Endorsement and Testimonial Guides (Guides) to cover ?consumer- generated media? such as blogs and other internet media forms. In the interest of providing consumers with full disclosure, the Guides re- quire bloggers to disclose any ?material connection[s]? they have with producers of any products that they ?endorse? on their blogs. A ?material connection? includes not only monetary compensation, but also any free good received by the blogger ? even if that good was provided unsolicited, with no conditions attached, for the purpose of al- lowing the blogger to review the product. Yet a constitutional analysis of unpaid blogger endorsements shows that such endorsements are not commercial speech ? which receives reduced constitutional protection ? but rather noncommercial speech entitled to full First Amendment protection. Not only do the Guides burden bloggers? pro- tected speech, they also create an unfair double standard by exempting legacy media4 from the Guides? disclosure requirements. Therefore, the Guides should be ruled unconstitutional as applied to bloggers. . . . Consumers should be wary of government policies that favor one form of media over another. Government discrimination among media forms based on ?editorial independence? is unprecedented.

Sounds persuasive to me!

Full post as published by Instapundit.com on April 23, 2010 (boomark / email).