Important US Laws

 Important U.S. Laws

While the Internet still retains some of the “wild wild west” feel, increasingly Internet activity, and particular blogging, is being shaped and governed by state and federal laws. For US bloggers in particular, blogging has become a veritable land mine of potential legal issues, and the situation isn’t helped by the fact that the law in this area is constantly in flux. In this article we highlight twelve of the most important US laws when it comes to blogging and provide some simple and straightforward tips for safely navigating them.

         Whether to Disclose Paid Posts:

          Over the last five years bloggers have begun to displace traditional media outlets as individuals’ source for reliable information and recommendations. This development has created big opportunities for advertisers to get bloggers to endorse a product or service, primarily through posts or affiliate links. But as the practice and influence of bloggers has grown, US law has come to govern this area.

What is the law?

       The Federal Trade Commission published a recommendation that companies who promote their product through word-of-mouth marketing must disclose these relationships. The recommendation applies explicitly to blogging, meaning that bloggers must disclose the fact that they are being paid to promote or review a product whenever that is the case.

PayPerPost and ReviewMe are websites that link advertisers up with bloggers that want to earn money for writing about their products. In light of the FTC recommendation, PayPerPost and ReviewMe bloggers are now required to disclose the fact that they are being paid for their endorsement. But beyond these two sites, there is a much larger industry of “Buzz Advertising” which takes place through informal emails and payments between bloggers. The letter of the FTC recommendation includes these informal payments as well, meaning that even under the table reviews must be disclosed. But considering that to date no blogger has been prosecuted for violating the FTC’s recommendation, it isn’t yet clear how strict the FTC is going to be or the punishments that will be imposed.

How to stay out of trouble:

1.      NEVER claim that you are an objective, unbiased source if you are being paid to provide information.

2.      ALWAYS make it easy for your readers to distinguish between advertising and editorial content.

3.      CONSIDER that even though the FTC’s paid review disclosure recommendation doesn’t appear to apply to links, meaning that webmasters aren’t required to “NoFollow” the paid links they give as of now, scholars at the University of Chicago Law School are currently discussing this as a future development for e-commerce law.

      Is Deep Linking Legal:

      One of the biggest advantages that blogging has over traditional media is the convention to include links in an article which connect the reader directly with the source. The links could direct the reader to a file, a different page on the same site or to a new site altogether. Despite the generally helpful nature of linking and the internet’s open platform, however, linking is not free from US government regulation.

What is the law?

         The biggest issues in linking right now revolve around copyright law and deep linking. Deep linking involves a blogger who places a link on his site that leads not to the front door of a site (e.g. AvivaDirectory.com), but instead to a particular page within that site (e.g. www.AvivaDirectory.com/successful-blog-launch).

Currently, there is no law that explicitly bans all deep linking to content you do not own. However, courts have declared that individual deep links are in violation of state law if they are not cited correctly. Thus, it is clear that passing off someone else’s work as your own by linking to a site in a manner in which it appears that the linked to content is a part of your site, is considered copyright infringement and it violates state laws that govern competitive business practices. But, it also appears that if you make it clear that the deep link you are providing isn’t to your own site then you are in the clear. The leading case in this area is Ticketmaster Corp. v. Tickets.com, Inc. where TicketMaster argued that a deep link by Tickets.com to a TicketMaster actual ticket purchase page was a copyright infringement because traffic was routed through the back door of the site. Thus far, however, no court has found that deep linking by a blogger is a copyright infringement or trespass