Blog homeVery interesting and informative article in The Register today about the European Union (EU) Unfair Commercial Practices Directive (going live in the UK in April 08, but rest of Europe from January 08). (Yes I really did just say “Very interesting” and law in the same sentence!). Read the full article
From a web perspective, areas that it will cover are:
- “Astroturfing” - for example paying bloggers to write positive statements about your company or product on their blogs (or negative about a competitor). This will now be illegal within Europe.
- Competitors writing reviews on product review websites while pretending to be a consumer. This will now be illegal within Europe
- Perhaps also writing anonymous comments on blogs - where there is some form of commercial impact. This may help Travolution who seem to be having fun and games with anonymous comments at the moment.
- Anywhere that a company falsely claims to be a consumer
- Perhaps also the couple of travel industry blogs - written semi-anonymously. If these are commercial blogs (they take advertising) then do they have to state who is writing them?
This won’t just cover companies but also individuals (who are technically “sole traders” when they add advertising to their websites)
I have once placed advertising with 3rd party bloggers as a form of astroturfing. I used the PayPerPost marketplace. I believe that in order to form an opinion on something it helps to try things first hand. Anyway, looks like that may be illegal now (when done without stating that the reason the blogger mentioned your product is because they were paid and the post is actually an advert). PayPerPost are a marmite company - you either love it or hate it.
The factor that will be used to determine whether a commercial practice is unfair will be based on the effect on the average consumer’s decision to buy. I assume this covers both a positive and negative effect.
Yeah yeah yeah - I am not a lawyer. If I was, I wouldn’t be giving advice via a blog.
Go and read the article on The Register - that really is written by a lawyer!
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it will be interesting to see how this sorts out over time. There is plenty of grey area in the legitimate comment to comment spam spectrum, including atroturfing.