WebPro News: Potential FTC Fines Raise Big Blogging Questions

The FTC is putting new regulations in effect for bloggers who place testimonials and product endorsements on their blogs. They go into effect Dec. 1.

From the article: "The revisions include a focus on "bloggers" and social media users, requiring them to properly disclose when they have received payment in the form of either money or product from a company or organization and produce content regarding said company or organization. The word is that bloggers can be fined up to $11,000 per post for not disclosing."

Also from the article: "Well-known author/editor/publisher Jeff Jarvis makes a really good point. He says the FTC assumes that the Internet is a medium. "It's not. It's a place where people talk. Most people who blog, as Pew found in a survey a few years ago, don't think they are doing anything remotely connected to journalism. I imagine that virtually no one on Facebook thinks they're making media. They're connecting. They're talking," he says. "So for the FTC to go after bloggers and social media – as they explicitly do – is the same as sending a government goon into Denny's to listen to the conversations in the corner booth and demand that you disclose that your Uncle Vinnie owns the pizzeria whose product you just endorsed.""

Here are some question raised about the new regulations which are mentioned in the article:

- If an unpaid blogger at the Huffington Post "endorses" a consumer product without meeting the FTC guidelines for disclosure of "material connections" to the makers of that consumer product, who's liable: the blogger or the Huffington Post?

- If a blogger prints out a series of blog posts and distributes those printed copies, is he now the publisher of a newspaper or magazine? If so, the Village Voice is distributed for free, so can a blogger/publisher distribute his newspaper or magazine for free, too?

- What if a blogger confines herself to stating demonstrably proven facts about a book, its author, its contents, and the matter of its publication? Does the FTC consider that an endorsement? What if she confines herself to stating such facts and includes links to an ecommerce site? Has her writing somehow been transformed from a statement of fact to an endorsement?

My own questions: When I find useful free software I like to make a blog post about it since my blog is tech related. Will I be fined $11,000 for that?

One thing I have done to post testimonials from my customers on-line is to use 3rd party review web sites, particularly for web hosting. At this point I would assume they are responsible for the content. Are those sites going to get slammed? Or no, because it's not related to blogging?