Ethical Blogging – Free Badges

So, we have a new law of the land – in the USA. The Federal Trade Commission would like everyone who is reviewing a product, whether given the product to try or paid to try the product or service, to disclose this fact. A few interesting tidbits – this disclosure policy must be linked to on every page that features a review. And it must be conspicuous.

I’ve noticed a lot of prominent bloggers now feature a “PR” or “Disclosure” policy page right in the navigation of their site. And some others feature a neat little link or badge at the end of the review post itself. And I’ve even visited some blogs where there are both.

To be honest, I’m not one that gets all excited about these things, I believe that our right to free speech is still in tact, the FTC just wants to protect the stupid people rights of those who might not realize that we have actually used/tried the service/product that we are reviewing. On with the show.

I’m feeling a little punchy tonight so I’ll sign off now, and leave you a few resources.

A link to automatically create a disclosure policy for free: www.disclosurepolicy.org.

And some images, that you are free to use if you choose. Please do not hotlink to them!! Right-click, and save the image to your hard drive. Then go to your media uploader or flickr or other photo host, and upload the image to use on your own blog.

Happy Bloggin!
Cathy