Phil Leigh;473118 Wrote: > Yes I'm familiar with that legislation and provided I continue to post > on this forum alone it has no relevance, because by definition I cannot > "distort or be likely to materially distort the average consumer's > economic behaviour"Perhaps, perhaps not. But a beta tester who subsequently > posted a great review on a site like Amazon, without making it clear that he'd been provided the hardware by Logitech without paying for it, would be leaving himself open to the FTC fine.
The two disturbing things I see in this are: 1) The wording in the FTC policy document makes frequent use of phrases like "will be determined on a case-by-case basis", leaving the door wide open. In effect they're saying "we aren't going to set any clearly-defined rules or tell you exactly what is and isn't allowed, but if you break the rules, we'll nail you." 2) This isn't "legislation" as the term is understood in the U.S. It isn't a law passed by Congress. It's just a bureaucratic policy, with the bureaucrats setting the rules very vaguely, and then making themselves the arbiters of what those rules are and who is guilty of breaking them. Pat may be right that a particular case, if it were challenged and taken to court, might be overturned, and perhaps the FTC would be forced to make the rules more definite and precise, and be forbidden from deciding on fines "on a case-by-case basis." But the poor schmuck who had to go to the trouble of taking it to court would be in for a whole lot of hassle, and legal costs, probably amounting to more than the fine itself. Which is how bureaucrats get away with this kind of thing: they make it cost more to fight it than to just give in and pay it. -- Dogberry2 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Dogberry2's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=18883 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=69819 _______________________________________________ discuss mailing list discuss@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/mailman/listinfo/discuss
