CNet News reports that the US Federal Trade Commission is to crack down on bloggers who write glowing reports of products that have received for free in lieu of payment for their services in writing those reviews. The intention here is to go after people who receive things like free computers or cars or finanacial services and pretend that they’ve bought them, but because of the way laws get written it could easily end up being loose enough to take in book reviewers. The CNet article even speculates that the regulations might extend to affiliate schemes, so even if you bought the book you could be pinged for not disclosing you got a cent or two if someone else bought it through your site.

I expect there to be much wailing and gnashing of teeth over this in the blogosphere in the next few days. Personally I don’t expect the affiliate scheme thing to happen because Amazon will be on the ball and lobby against it. I also don’t expect the FTC to waste its time going after small fry like book reviewers. However, the anarchist in me worries about governments accumulating excuses to go after people they don’t like, however petty those reasons might be.