US Law Archives - Page 45 of 71

FTC Reassures Kidlit Bloggers at DC Meeting

Galleycat: An “associate director for advertising practices at the Federal Trade Commission met with attendees of the 2009 Kidlitosphere Conference to discuss the FTC’s new guidelines for commercial endorsement and how they’ll affect book bloggers when they go into effect on December 1. . . . Mary Engle made . . . what the blog Galleysmith described as ‘a distinction between independent reviewers (that would be us book bloggers y’all) and participants of marketing programs.’ The report goes on to say that “

[Engle] admitted that the FTC probably could have done a better job of drawing this distinction in the guidelines but hoped further clarification would help alleviate concern.”

The upshot of this is simple: “If you are working with a marketing program you must disclose that connection. If you are an independent reviewer you do not.”

US Government is After Book Bloggers

Books Blog: “If you get a free book, and don’t disclose this ‘vested interest’ if you blog about it, you are now liable to five-figure fines. Does this make any kind of sense to anybody?”

New Law Gives Immigrant Widows of US Citizens Right to Stay In U.S.

Wall St. Journal: “A bill passed by Congress Tuesday grants a victory to a small group of immigrants who risked being deported. A provision attached to the $41.8 billion Homeland Security appropriations bill ends a controversial interpretation of federal law, known as the ‘widow penalty.’ The clause required a couple be married at least two years in order for the foreign spouse to qualify for legal residency in the U.S. . . . The provision passed Tuesday removes the two-year marriage requirement, permitting widows and widowers of U.S. citizens to apply for a green card for themselves and on behalf of their children born abroad.”

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FTC Settles Canadian Wire Fraud Case for $18 Million

The Blog of Legal Times: The “FTC announced that MoneyGram would pay $18 million in consumer redress to settle charges that company agents helped con artists trick U.S. consumers into wiring at least $84 million to Canada between 2004 and 2008.The Minneapolis-based company, which is the second-largest money transfer service in the United States, is also required to institute a comprehensive anti-fraud and employee-monitoring program.”

Notes from Digital Hollywood: Industry Solutions to Privacy Issues in Online Behavioral Advertising May Not Satisfy FTC Chiefs

The Digital Media Lawyer Blog: “A dominant theme at this week’s Digital Hollywood conference is the tension between the need to for truly targeted advertising to online audiences and an individual’s right to privacy. The Internet creates the ability for businesses to gather a marketer’s dream world of data about their customers. This can include identification data (name, address, phone number, email address), demographic data (age, gender, marital status, sexual orientation), financial data (bank and credit card account data), and behavioral data (browsing history, downloading history) and much, much more. If this type of data falls into the wrong hands, it can subject the customer or identify fraud. But even many purely commercial uses can cause embarrassment or harm to the consumer.”