Quote:
Originally Posted by luqmaninbmore
Do they have a legal definition of 'blogger?' I mean, if somebody sends me something to review, while I feel a personal obligation to make this known, to make it a legal one seems to me to be extremely draconian. The only exception I could see would be for those who are professional bloggers (i.e. those who are employed to blog and to tweet, etc.); the local, state, and federal governments have a long tradition of regulating professions according to community ethical standards. This could be seen as simply an extension of that tradition.
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It is not about being being a "professional blogger" it is about said blogger being sent a sample to review, which these reviewers always have to return so it can be sent to other reviewers vs. being GIVEN the thing being reviewed or something else's as a "thank you" for the review. The point of the "gift" is to pass along the subtle, well not so subtle, "give us a good review and we will give you more good stuff...bad review...thanks for your time maybe sometime, someday, hopefully in your lifetime we will ask you to review something else..." In other-words, these companies are lobbying for positive evaluations using out of date guidelines via bribery.
The guidelines make clear that while not all failures to comply will not be found, all they need to do is find a few cases, prosecute those, win, and we will start to see more honest evaluations.