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EU Bans Sock-Puppet Blogs
PhilipMarlowe9000 writes in with news of a new EU directive that will take effect in the UK at the end of this year to ban "sock-puppet" reviews or websites, part of an EU-wide overhaul of consumer laws. From the article: "Businesses that write fake blog entries or create whole wesbites purporting to be created by customers will fall foul of a European directive banning them from 'falsely representing oneself as a consumer.' From December 31, when the change becomes law in the UK, they can be named and shamed by trading standards or taken to court. The Times has learnt that the new regulations also will apply to authors who praise their own books under a fake identity on websites such as Amazon."
Please keep in mind that fraud is not generally protected speech, particularly when it relates to commercial speech.
Regulating the internet usually works incredibly well. This is sure to do everything it is intended to do.
Slashdot - where whining about luck is the new way to make the world you want.
I don't think 'sock puppet' is a particularly good term to describe what's apparently being described. You want 'astroturfing', I think, or maybe some subspecies of marketing virus.
...an additional account of an existing member of an Internet community to invent a separate user. (Not well-worded either, alas, but the point is there under the clumsy verbiage.)
The sock meme has always been personal rather than corporate, as in the Wikipedia entry:
Are corporations considered legal persons in Europe in general? If not - then good on you, Europe - you have the possibility of standing up to corporations and being legally consistent in cases like this.
Here, in order to enact a law like that, we'd have to take away the right from everyone, else have it overruled by courts.
Ryan Fenton
P.S. Yes, I do want to 'oppress' corporations, whenever they are in contest with the interests of most citizens.
I know a few politicians I consider sock puppets for other entities. Can we ban them too?
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
It's going to cost thousands of corporate jobs and eliminate whole departments. What do they expect companies to do? Depend on actual positive feedback from customers?
The US recently arrested British citizens for the crime of visiting the US between connecting flights (oh, and having founded and subsequently retired from a money transfer company used by online gambling sites at one time before such a thing was made illegal).
It might be of interest to Americans to know that should they, or their company, or their former employer (all the way back to that job you worked evenings in high school), or any company that they might own stock in (or hold funds that hold stock in, etc) ever post any kind of positive review of themselves on the internet where it can be read in Europe, then you probably should schedule your flights to make sure none of them stop there.
So it's still related, even if only on the idea that one of these days some European agency is going to decide to play tit-for-tat for some of the stupid shit America does to them.
If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars.
I just want to say that without Slashdot, I would never have made it to where I am today. Kudos for a great website.
Sincerely,
Captain Burritto
Europe has got it right. Sites like these should be eradicated from the face of the internet. Please, think of the children!
Apparently there is no "outside the US" to a lot of American Citizens or their Politicians for that matter.
Don't be so ridiculus. Americans are educated to a very high standard of Geograhpy. There's Canada up North, and Mexico down South, go any further and you fall off the edge. Oh yeah, and there's Iraq and France too, that's where the baddies live, mind you have to fall off the edge to get to those places. OK I missed a few places, like China (that's where the Chinese come from), and Australia (which is a giant desert without any intelligent lifeforms) but that, basically is the rest of the world. It's no wonder they are all trying to move here!
Either speech is free or it isn't, no matter what convenient label you want to put it under.
That's an easy position to take, because it is the expression of an ideal. In the real world, rights clash all the time. The rights of Individual A, when they come into conflict with those of Individual B, or of society at large, can't be absolute.
My right to defend myself does not give me the right to shoot someone in the head when they try to pick my pocket. My right to own property doesn't mean that I can drill down and inject anthrax into the groundwater. My right of free speech doesn't mean that I can spam millions of email users without consequence. It also doesn't mean that I can advertise Fruit Loops cereal as a cure for cancer. In Abstract World it sounds great to let the buyer beware, but just imagine how much of a drag that would be on society. Transaction costs would go up, because much more due dilligence would need to be done, just to conduct a simple purchase. Those with more free time and more resources would be able to conduct due dilligence. Everyone else would be put at a substantial disadvantage. That's a perversion of free speech, which is designed to protect political speech, not the fleecing of other citizens.
As a side note, your slippery slope argument may apply in some countries, but not in the United States.I don't know how it is elsewhere, but in the United States, commercial speech has been granted more 1st Amendment protection over the past few decades, not less.
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
There also goes any kind of marketing that was actually interesting (ARGs and the like)
Apparently there is no "outside the US" to a lot of American Citizens or their Politicians for that matter.
Don't be so ridiculus. Americans are educated to a very high standard of Geograhpy. There's Canada up North, and Mexico down South, go any further and you fall off the edge. Oh yeah, and there's Iraq and France too, that's where the baddies live, mind you have to fall off the edge to get to those places. OK I missed a few places, like China (that's where the Chinese come from), and Australia (which is a giant desert without any intelligent lifeforms) but that, basically is the rest of the world. It's no wonder they are all trying to move here!
I realized the rest of your post was supposed to be tongue-in-cheek, but what's the deal throwing the truth in there as a curve ball?Just kidding.
Without intelligent lifeforms? We're a country of bloody Einsteins compared to New Zealand!
"While England doesn't spell out its free speech rights as absolutely as the US"
Au contraire :
Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights
FREEDOM OF EXPRESSION
1. Everyone has the right to freedom of expression. This right shall include freedom to hold opinions and to receive and impart information and ideas without interference by public authority and regardless of frontiers. This Article shall not prevent States from requiring the licensing of broadcasting, television or cinema enterprises.
2. The exercise of these freedoms, since it carries with it duties and responsibilities, may be subject to such formalities, conditions, restrictions or penalties as are prescribed by law and are necessary in a democratic society, in the interests of national security, territorial integrity or public safety, for the prevention of disorder or crime, for the protection of health or morals, for the protection of the reputation or rights of others, for preventing the disclosure of information received in confidence, or for maintaining the authority and impartiality of the judiciary.
There are places where the networks are not touching,and there are places where they are-Boeing's Lori Gunter
Corporate personhood is a term used to describe the legal fiction used within United States law that a corporation, under the concept of legal entity, has a limited subset of the same constitutional rights as a human being
Here in the EU, there is a very clear distinction between a person and a company.
It does have some effect -- though it's not enforced as well as I'd like -- for example movies with paid product-placements are accepted, despite imho being a straigthforward violation of the above law. No idea why.
When a new law is written and put into action, people's debate center around two opposing opinions: is it good, or is it bad.
/for example/ face public humiliation and mockery before they decide that this wasn't a good idea to begin with?
Granted, every law can be bad or good, but we're missing the big picture. Have you seen the proposed European consitution? The Bible's both testaments are nothing compared to it.
Every time you put a law about something, you need to be really friggin sure that the right solution is *legal*. Otherwise we end up in a system so complicated and flawed (every law is imperfect, you know this), that nobody understands it at all, and the rules are so many and in many cases conflicting with each other, that the only way to apply them is selectively and "with a spin", depending on the lawyer/prosecutor/citizen bias.
We all fall pray to lawyers and the juridical system setting traps for us on every step to doing something.
Should fake blogs and reviews be banned? They shouldn't be encouraged, but a law is excessive. I mean, how many times should Sony
Fake marketing right now is, in most instances, easily recognizable. If we decide to patch the situation with a bunch of "moral" and "smart" laws, then the corporations in question will just get stealthier, and hire few more lawyers to let them workaround the law.
In the end, we gain nothing, except more complexity, and more lawyers. Great.