It is really impossible to overstate the crazed nature of the proposed policy. And I don’t mean just bad outcomes, I mean detached from reality.
The world the FTC stands ready to regulate does not exist, the distinctions it attempts to draw complete fantasy. Consumers of book reviews do not know that reviewers are compensated with review copies? In any event, what is the supposed harm — that millions of book readers are being systematically duped into buying bad books by glowing reviews purchased with swag, and then those readers keep going back to the same reviewers to be duped again?
Is there some barrier-to-entry to book reviewing that keeps this racket going? Or should the FTC license book reviewers to make sure all is on the up-and-up? I cannot wait until Government Motors figures out that your shiny new models do not get reviewed by the big car mags without month after month of glossy ads purchased at full-rate to “sell” the car to the mag’s reviewers.
My only confusion is how self-aware this delusion might be. I truly think regulators at all levels of government understand that they must manufacture excuses to regulate Inter-webs interaction amongst the public precisely because of the Net’s tendency to self-regulate, especially with regard to transparency and consistency.
