Obama's FTC - A Wolf In Sheep's Clothing

There was an innocuous AP story in the paper on June 22nd titled "FTC tries to make blogosphere honest". It details the efforts of the FTC (Federal Trade Commission) to regulate Bloggers. Per the article, the premise for doing so is that Bloggers routinely advocate for particular products, or allow ads to be posted on their Blogs, and thus, are subject to the scrutiny of government regulators.

You can check it out here at: http://tinyurl.com/n3hlhl.

Given that 99% of all Blogs are conversation, if you're as confused as me why it is that the government - much less the FTC - would need to regulate conversation, read on.

Everybody in the Blogosphere is familiar with ad-posting. The whole idea is that if your Blog is popular - regardless of its content - Google and other search engine companies will pay you a small commission based on the number of hits on your Blog and the number of folks who click on the ads therein. The Blogger does not control the ads that appear on their Blog; rather, it is based on Key Words in the Blog that then are filtered by the Search Engines to direct them to appropriate advertisers. It's always been viewed as a win-win, and never before has anybody attempted to regulate the content of a Blog based on some benighted notion of Consumer Protection.

Until the Obama Administration that is.

The problem is, the Obama Administration isn't interested in regulating commerce. They're interested in regulating speech. The proof of this is the incredibly low threshold the government sets for itself in determining if unscrupulous activity is taking place. The AP article goes on to explain that the FTC will come after Bloggers and the companies who advertise through them for:

a) allowing ads to be posted on a Blog, even the randomly posted advertisements based on keywords;

b) failure of the Blogger to disclose any "compensation" they receive from advertisers.

To say that this is thin justification would be an understatement. It would also be a virtual re-invention of the FTC charter. Never before has the FTC gone after individuals for penny ante economic activity, and the interpretation as to the motives by both Parties would be left to the sole discretion of the FTC. Further, the policy would mean that ANY Blogger who had ads on their website would be subject to enforcement, and that their guilt would be determined at the whim of FTC bureaucrats.

What's interesting here is that there is rarely any contractual arrangement between a Blogger and an Advertiser, much less a relationship of any kind. The vast majority of Bloggers don't even know who the Advertisers are, and it is solely through Google and similar companies that the ads are posted and the revenue paid. It's hard to see how the FTC could establish that the Blogger and Advertiser were thus conspiring to mislead consumers, but that certainly won't stop your typical Minion of Self Righteousness in the Democrat Party.

It is worth noting the number of times in the past decade that the Media have reported on the likes of China and Iran and their attempts to regulate content on the Internet so as to suppress free speech. Obama is now following suit. Will The Media attribute to him similar motives? I doubt it. They've already given him the Fig Leaf of virtuous consumer protection as a cover.

Beyond the obvious Police State mentality that inspired such a policy, it's also worth noting who it is that the Government is going to use to enforce this new policy: Google. The Obama Administration has already started to bring Google under its thumb, establishing the same relationship with its founder that it has with Jeffry Immelt, the CEO of GE, which owns among other things Obama's favorite Media Pet, NBC. The vast Right Wing Conspiracy Theory version of these relationships is that the Obama Administration will give these corporations favorable treatment and regulatory precedence over competitors. In other words, they'll pick winners and losers; the winners will be Friends of the Democrat Party.

OffHisMeds is more than willing to sign on to this particular Conspiracy Theory, primarily because he cannot afford not to. Google and all other major Web Search companies already document and store virtually every transaction you conduct and every website you visit over the Internet. It's called "Data Mining". This has been the source of much concern on the part of Privacy advocates, yet the Obama Administration has done nothing to regulate such activity. That's a strange reaction to a government so concerned about the alleged excesses of the Bush Administration in Data Mining to track terrorists. Apparently it's OK, though, if you're Google, and you're only using it to help the FTC snoop on Bloggers.

It's ironic to think that Google can Data Mine the living daylights out of Average Americans so as to restrict speech that might be offensive to the Obama Administration, whereas - thanks to Democrats - the Bush Administration had to jump through every conceivable legal hoop in order to Data Mine Terrorists. If you as a Blogger are coming to the conclusion that you have less rights than a Terrorist in Obama's America, you aren't far off the mark.

And one can only contemplate the gargantuan expansion of the FTC that will be necessary to track, investigate and prosecute this activity, no doubt another happy outcome for the President who promised "to create or save 3.5 million new jobs" with his policies. Problem is, if you understand how Ad Searches work, you'll understand that those busy Apparats are going to have their hands full. Let me give you an example: In a previous blog, I criticized obnoxious gay activist Perez Hilton on the explicit premise that his gayness made him obnoxious; clearly, not exactly a pro-gay opinion. An hour later, Google had posted gay dating service ads on my Blog, based on key words. Will the bicycle seat sniffers at the FTC now look for a conspiracy between me and Perez Hilton to hide some mutually beneficial monetary arrangement?

One Final Note: OffHisMeds is happy to report that - in the past eight months - his total earnings from Internet Advertisements is $5.84. I know this because Google tells me so, and since Google's official policy is to pay nothing to a Blogger until their earnings surpass $100.00, I should be off the hook. So on the one hand, I'm grateful that so few people read my Blog, as that will mean that I will avoid the scrutiny of the FTC for the foreseeable future; on the other hand, I'm not so hopeful where the DHS (Department of Homeland Security) is concerned, seeing as how OffHisMeds criticizes the government with some regularity.

And besides, DHS is armed; FTC is not.

At least so far.