More thoughts on the new FTC Regs

Shelly Palmer published on the new FTC regs this morning. His basic take was that it was irrelevant. A gnat in the face of a tsunami, but that all will be well because the law of large numbers will prevent anyone from changing the world by paying off a few bloggers. It's a good addition to the dialogue. So far we've got:
1. Adotas says its unenforceable because they have no one to enforce it (see previous post). Which no one's really debating
2. Eric Goldman of Santa Clara says its pre-empted by existing legislation (47 USC 230) before it even gets out of the gate
3. And Shelly effectively saying its an answer looking for a problem

Unlike Shelly, I thought the regs were actually relatively easy to read....frankly, I thought they were too simplistic, almost as if they were targeted to be read by the bloggers or other lay people themselves. On the other hand, they didn't strike me as broadly, researched well-thought out legal doctrine. Which is a bit stunning for something 30 years in the making. For example, I spent 10 minutes looking for the definition of a "network marketing program", since those seemed to be entities that the FTC was interested in. I never found a definition - again, stunning when important, non-obvious terms go undefined in a 'legal' document - but I found its first use in a footnote referring to BzzAgent's brief...apparently it was a term BzzAgent used and the FTC adopted.

Following through on that thought, it was remarkable actually how much of the statutes referred to the briefs that had been filed. Yet they didn't extensively address, to Goldman's point, other existing legislation or practice. Further evidence of this...at Expo we've already had multiple legal opinions essentially that, "this doesn't even come close to applying to what you do." Yet because its tangential and vague all at once, we *have* to think about it.

The debate will continue (I have more thoughts I want to post myself on, but need more consideration) but one pretty quickly starts feeling like the bottom line was that the FTC basically just wanted to say, "Hey everybody, do the right thing because we're watching." Granted, that's not really the way governments do things and a simple press release to that effect would have engendered a lot of derision, but this alternative reality is that we're all wasting a lot of energy talking about 81 pages that doesn't hold any more water than "Hey everybody, do the right thing because we're watching."