Like James Gattuso, I have a lot of questions about the Federal Trade Commission’s new “Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising,” especially as they apply to bloggers. (And over at Silicon Angle, Mark ‘Rizzn’ Hopkins has been doing a great job keeping tabs on the many questions and hypothetical situations that others have been posing about the new rules). But the one thing I just can’t wrap my head around is how the FTC plans to enforce these rules against those speakers or media outlets who have print publications which are fully protected by the First Amendment. So, I was pleased to see my favorite press critic Jack Shafer of Salon, ask the same question in his latest column on “The FTC’s Mad Power Grab”:
Because of a pesky thing called the First Amendment, the guidelines don’t apply to news organizations, which receive thousands of free books, CDs, and DVDs each day from media companies hoping for reviews. But if the guidelines don’t apply to established media like the New York Review of Books, which also happens to publish reviews on the Web, why should they apply to Joe Blow’s blog? Regulating bloggers via the FTC while exempting establishment reporters looks like a back-door means of licensing journalists and policing speech.
Exactly. Is the FTC just going to ignore such speakers or media organizations but enforce against everyone else? Isn’t that just a bit silly and radically unfair? Moreover, might such a policy end up incentivizing some folks to create token print publications to get around such the regulations? I doubt it, but you never know.
Regardless, as Shafer notes, the rules are so hopelessly open-ended and arbitrary that they are bound to pose problems for whomever they are enforced against: Continue reading →
A major new online child safety task report by the “Point Smart. Click Safe.” Blue Ribbon Working Group has just been released. First, some background. In June 2007, the National Cable & Telecommunications Association (NCTA), the principal trade association of the cable industry in the United States, announced “Cable Puts You in Control: PointSmart. ClickSafe.” a new campaign by its members to offer parents assistance in keeping their children safe online. As part of the initiative, the NCTA hosted a major online child safety summit and also announced the formation of the “Point Smart. Click Safe. Blue Ribbon Working Group” in partnership with the Internet KeepSafe Coalition (iKeepSafe) and Common Sense Media. These three organizations, along with the cable industry’s “Cable in the Classroom” program, agreed to bring together a collection of online safety experts from many disciplines to study these issues and develop a set of “best practice” recommendations that could be implemented across the Internet industry. [Disclosure: It was my pleasure to serve as a member of this blue ribbon working group.]
Today, the “Point Smart. Click Safe.” working group produced its final report and concluded that:
Ensuring children’s online safety is a difficult and complex task that calls for input from and action by a wide variety of stakeholders. There is no “silver bullet”—no single technology or approach that has proved effective. Rather, what is required is:
- A combination of different technologies,
- Continuing digital literacy education for parents, educators, and children, and
- Active participation by all concerned companies, groups and individuals.
Similarly, a singular focus on safety is insufficient. Children must learn to minimize risks but also learn appropriate and ethical behaviors in this digital world. In addition, they need an understanding of media literacy, in order to be able to think critically about the content they consume and increasingly create. Therefore, best practices must be part of a larger effort to provide an entertaining, educational, and safe experience for children.
Compared to previous online child safety task forces, which I will discuss in a subsequent post, the major contribution of this task force was its focus on detailed industry best practices that various online providers could adopt to help parents, policymakers, and law enforcement better keep kids safe online. As the working group’s final report noted:
Continue reading →
Mark Cuban penned a sharp piece over the weekend entitled “Who Cares What People Write?” in which he explains why people shouldn’t get too worked up about what they might read about themselves (or their organizations) online since, chances are, very few people are ever going to see it anyway. To explain why, Cuban identifies two kinds of “Outties” (which is shorthand for someone who publishes on the web): (1) “professional outties” (or “Those that attempt to publish in a limited number of locations to a maximum number of readers or listeners, with a reasonable expectation of building a following.”) and (2) “amateur outties” (“Those that attempt to publish in as many places as possible hoping they are “discovered.”) But those “amateur outties… really [have] no impact on 99.99pct of the population,” Cuban argues, “[and the] vast majority of what is written on the web goes unread and even that which is read, is quickly forgotten.” Moreover, “even when something is heavily commented on, it is usually just an onslaught by the ‘amateur outties.’”
Thus, Cuban concludes:
Fragmentation applies to 100pct of media. We have gotten to the point where it is so easy to publish to the web, that most of it is ignored. When it is not ignored and it garners attention, the attention is usually from those people, the amateur outties, whose only goal is to create volume on the web in hopes of being noticed.
That’s not to say there are no sites that people consume and pay attention to. There obviously are. That’s where the “professional outties” come in. They are branded. They have an identity that usually extends beyond the net. They are able to make a living publishing, even if its not much of one. They are the sites that people consume and may possibly remember.
The moral of the story is that on the internet, volume is not engagement. Traffic is not reach. When you see things written about a person, place or thing you care about, whether its positive or negative, take a very deep breath before thinking that the story means anything to anyone but you.
Continue reading →
Eric Goldman is the man. His “Technology & Marketing Law Blog” is must-reading for cyberlaw geeks; packed with indispensable updates and insights about breaking development in the world of Internet law.
Anyway, he’s just published his “2008 Cyberlaw Year-in-Review,” which provides a comprehensive overview of the major developments and cases from the past year. This is the sort of compendium that I used to have to spend big bucks to get from DC law firms. And Eric just gives it away as a public resource. God bless him.
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Posted in: Advertising & Marketing, First Amendment, Free Speech & Online Child Safety 
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The Technology Liberation Front is the tech policy blog dedicated to keeping politicians' hands off the 'net and everything else related to technology.
