I have mentioned in previous posts here that I believe in "O'HUG" Communication (Open, Honest, Upfront, and Good). My whole life, I have "threatened" to write a book on this, and how it affects every area of everybody's life. Someday, I will!
Well, it is time to "wake up and smell the coffee" when it comes to what is happening in the blogosphere that, I believe, affects "buyers & sellers. While I was attending the blog session at the SES San Jose Conference on 8/9/05, Pete Blackshaw was publishing his ClickZ article on Protect the Marketing Commons. I missed this article even though I used another of Pete's articles entitled Attention? I Don't Want Your Freakin' Attention!in my recent The Holy Grail of Trust post. Both articles are great!
Today, Pete has an article entitled Ten Simple Rules For Dating a Blogger. In it there is a link to Mark Cuban's blog post on Splogs. This blog spam problem along with the Really Simple Stealing problem I heard about at the SES San Jose Conference (I was told that WOMMA - cofounded by Pete - is working on this), says that, as much as I dislike it, maybe the FCC should start to get involved.
Why the FTC? They have precedent in getting involved in consumer fraud cases where false claims for products advertised were made. To settle FTC charges, one person/company paid $500,000 in consumer redress back in 1998, and was barred from making false claims about the products in the future. He was also required to disclose that his infomercials were, in fact, paid advertisements.
Why does the infomercial (aka "paid programming") analogy work in the case of "Really Simple Stealing", IMO? Well, because plagerized blogs really do "damage" to the reader/user, and they "damage" the publisher of the original content. If you look at a blog post, or its resulting RSS feed, as the "product" (aka delivered "experience") of the original publisher, then the plagerized blog is a fraudulent attempt to make false claims of originality that the plagerizer even wants to make advertising revenue from in some cases. This obviously creates damages for the original content publisher. But, the reader/user is also damaged/mislead due to lack of disclosure, and implied false claims of originality. The plagerized material builds credibility for the wrong person. It sure seems like FTC concerned fraud to me?
Therefore, false (implied) claims for products advertised are being made! Remember that "a 'product' can also be an 'experience', which like a service is intangible." But, the original parts of the blog post product are "owned" by its original creator. Some even have Creative Commons licenses. So, shouldn't the thief be forced to disclose that his blog posts are, in fact, plagerized content advertisements that are paid for by the people who click on the PPC ads, and "sponsored" for free, and against their will, by the originators of the content? Even with no ads, clear and conspicuous disclosure of who should get the credit for creating the enjoyable reader/user experience should be mandated by the FTC.
Consumer Reports WebWatch Guidelines for credibility state "Sites should clearly disclose their ownership, private or public, naming their parent company." = Who owns the originally created blog post content? & Disclosure of the personally identifiable information of the duplicate content blogger.
WOMMA's purpose for its "Code of Ethics" includes "To survive and succeed, word of mouth marketing must earn the trust of consumers by protecting their right to open, honest communication." I like "open" and "honest", but I think it should also say "upfront" and "good = clear, conspicuous, comprehensive and completely comprehended", IMO.
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