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There seems to be a great deal of apprehension about the FTC's update to their Guide concerning the use of endorsements and testimonials in advertising, including bloggers. This update, which took effect this month, has a number of writers, specifically book reviewers, a little concerned.

Like most of us, at first I thought it was a means of the government reaching out to create havoc with online reviewers and the books they receive in their work. Any product a reviewer receives must be disclosed along with the review. As compensation was mentioned, I figured it wouldn’t be long before the government decided reviewers needed to list the review books or products as income.

After reading the FTC’s 12 page document, I think I had it wrong. I have no problem with a reviewer having to disclose the source of his or her review product. Receiving a product to review does not ensure the reviewer will give a good review. And, I’m not sure the FTC is concerned with book reviews.

As a courtesy to this site's readers here is the FTC’s Press Release pertaining to the changes:

FTC Publishes Final Guides Governing Endorsements, Testimonials
Changes Affect Testimonial Advertisements, Bloggers, Celebrity Endorsements

http://www.ftc.gov/opa/2009/10/endortest.shtm
October 5, 2009

The Federal Trade Commission today announced that it has approved final revisions to the guidance it gives to advertisers on how to keep their endorsement and testimonial ads in line with the FTC Act.

The notice incorporates several changes to the FTC’s Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising, which address endorsements by consumers, experts, organizations, and celebrities, as well as the disclosure of important connections between advertisers and endorsers. The Guides were last updated in 1980.

Under the revised Guides, advertisements that feature a consumer and convey his or her experience with a product or service as typical when that is not the case will be required to clearly disclose the results that consumers can generally expect. In contrast to the 1980 version of the Guides – which allowed advertisers to describe unusual results in a testimonial as long as they included a disclaimer such as “results not typical” – the revised Guides no longer contain this safe harbor.

The revised Guides also add new examples to illustrate the long standing principle that “material connections” (sometimes payments or free products) between advertisers and endorsers – connections that consumers would not expect – must be disclosed. These examples address what constitutes an endorsement when the message is conveyed by bloggers or other “word-of-mouth” marketers. The revised Guides specify that while decisions will be reached on a case-by-case basis, the post of a blogger who receives cash or in-kind payment to review a product is considered an endorsement. Thus, bloggers who make an endorsement must disclose the material connections they share with the seller of the product or service. Likewise, if a company refers in an advertisement to the findings of a research organization that conducted research sponsored by the company, the advertisement must disclose the connection between the advertiser and the research organization. And a paid endorsement – like any other advertisement – is deceptive if it makes false or misleading claims.

Celebrity endorsers also are addressed in the revised Guides. While the 1980 Guides did not explicitly state that endorsers as well as advertisers could be liable under the FTC Act for statements they make in an endorsement, the revised Guides reflect Commission case law and clearly state that both advertisers and endorsers may be liable for false or unsubstantiated claims made in an endorsement – or for failure to disclose material connections between the advertiser and endorsers. The revised Guides also make it clear that celebrities have a duty to disclose their relationships with advertisers when making endorsements outside the context of traditional ads, such as on talk shows or in social media.

The Guides are administrative interpretations of the law intended to help advertisers comply with the Federal Trade Commission Act; they are not binding law themselves. In any law enforcement action challenging the allegedly deceptive use of testimonials or endorsements, the Commission would have the burden of proving that the challenged conduct violates the FTC Act.

The Commission vote approving issuance of the Federal Register notice detailing the changes was 4-0. The notice will be published in the Federal Register shortly, and is available now on the FTC’s Web site as a link to this press release. Copies also are available from the FTC’s Consumer Response Center, Room 130, 600 Pennsylvania Avenue, N.W., Washington, DC 20580.

The Federal Trade Commission works for consumers to prevent fraudulent, deceptive, and unfair business practices and to provide information to help spot, stop, and avoid them. To file a complaint in English or Spanish, visit the FTC’s online Complaint Assistant or call 1-877-FTC-HELP (1-877-382-4357). The FTC enters complaints into Consumer Sentinel, a secure, online database available to more than 1,700 civil and criminal law enforcement agencies in the U.S. and abroad. The FTC’s Web site provides free information on a variety of consumer topics.

MEDIA CONTACT:
Betsy Lordan
Office of Public Affairs
202-326-3707

STAFF CONTACT:
Richard Cleland
Bureau of Consumer Protection
202-326-3088

You can read about the changes in the document itself at:
http://www.ftc.gov/os/2009/10/091005revisedendorsementguides.pdf

I'm not a lawyer, but I think for the time being book reviewers are safe.

I'd love to know what your views are.

Talk to you soon,
Karen

David W. Orr is the Paul Sears Distinguished Professor of Environmental Studies and Politics at Oberlin College.  His new book, Down to the Wire: Confronting Climate Collapse, is an eloquent assessment of climate destabilization and an urgent call to action.  In the excerpt below we learn about one challenge our government will need to address.

…the hardest tests for our Constitution and democracy are just ahead and have to do with the relationship between governance, politics, and the dramatic changes in Earth systems now under way.  Human actions have set in motion a radical disruption of the biophysical systems of the planet that will undermine the human prospect, perhaps for centuries.  The crucial issues will be decided by how and how well we conduct the public business in the decades and centuries ahead, and now on a planetary scale.  Of the hard realities of governance ahead, five stand out.

The first challenge is that posed by climate change driven by the combustion of fossil fuels and changes in land management.  The Fourth Assessment Report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (2007), the Stern Review (Stern, 2007), the research on the effects of global change on the United States carried out by the National Science and Technology Council (2008), and other scientific evidence indicate that our future will be characterized by:

• -Rising sea levels by perhaps, eventually, as much as five to six meters or more, but no one knows for certain.  What is known is that virtually everything frozen on the planet is melting much more rapidly than anyone though possible even a few years ago.
• -Higher temperatures almost everywhere, but concentrated int he northern latitudes, melting permafrost, an boreal forests turning from weak sinks for carbon into sources of carbon and methane.
• -More drought and severe heat waves, particularly in mid-continent areas.
• -Tropical diseases spreading into regions with previously temperate climates and emergence of new diseases.
• -Degradation of forests and ecosystems due to higher temperatures, drought, and changing diseases.
• -Rapid decline of marine ecosystems threatened by acidification and higher surface water temperatures.
• -Larger (and possibly more frequent) hurricanes, tornadoes and fires.
• -Loss of a significant fraction of biological diversity.

Given our past emission of heat-trapping gases, much of this is simply unavoidable.  Regardless of what we do now, the Earth will warm by another half to a full degree centigrade by midcentury bringing us uncomfortably close to what many scientists believe to be the threshold of disaster.  The climate system has roughly a 30-year thermal lag between the release of heat-trapping gasses and the climate-driven weather events that we experiences.  Hurricane Katrina, for example, grew from a Class I storm to a Class 5 event quite possibly because of the warming effects of carbon released in the late 1970s.  Similarly, the causes behind the weather headlines of the future will likely include the use of fossil fuels and land abuses decades before.  We are already committed to a substantial warming of the Earth, by as much as 1.8 degrees C above pre-industrial levels.

Many credible scientists believe that we still have time to avert the worst, but not a minute to waste.  No one knows for certain what a “safe” threshold of heat-trapping gases in the atmosphere might be.  For hundreds of thousands and perhaps millions of years, the level of carbon dioxide did not go above ~280 parts per million (ppm), compared to the present level of 387 ppm, with another ~2+ ppm added each year.  Climate scientist James Hansen has recently proposed 350 ppm CO2 as the upper boundary of safety.

We are clearly in uncharted territory.  Further delay in stabilizing and reducing levels of CO2 poses what economist Nicholas Stern calls a “procrastination penalty” that will grow steadily until we eventually cross a point of no return.  In other words, it will be far cheaper to act now than at some later date when effective action may no longer be possible.  If the warming should occur abruptly “like the ones that are so abundant in the paleoclimate record,” we will have no time to adapt before the catastrophe strikes.  And there is good reason to believe that the climate system is indeed highly sensitive to small changes: “Earth’s climate is extremely sensitive: it is capable of taking inputs that seem small to us and transforming them into outputs that seems large.”

No matter what our personal preferences, politics, or beliefs may be, as greenhouse gases accumulate in the atmosphere, temperatures will continue to rise until the Earth reaches a new equilibrium.  Even were we to stop emission of CO2 today, sea levels from the thermal expansion of water and increasing mass from the melting glaciers and ice caps would change coast lines for perhaps the next thousand years.  If the rate of melting is rapid or sudden, the migration inland will create hundreds of thousands, or more likely millions, of refugees-like Katrina but on a much larger scale.  Unless we chose to build dikes and can afford to do so, many coastal cities will be flooded possibly within decades or by the end of the century.  A majority of the millions of people who live along the Gulf Coast and eastern seaboard will have to move inland to higher ground.  But we have neither the money necessary to relocate millions of people nor the infrastructure to accommodate them once moved.

The warming of the northern latitudes and oceans means many things, among which is the possibility of triggering positive feedbacks that will cause the release of large amounts of methane from permafrost and the ocean floor.  As with other possible tipping points, a large release of methane to the atmosphere is a wildcard in the deck that hopefully will never be brought into play.  But again the scientific evidence does not permit us to predict accurately. It is clear, however, that the government is ill prepared to handle the social, economic, and political disruption to which we are now committed, to say nothing of the effects of more rapid changes…

Daniel Sperling is a Professor of Engineering and Environmental Science and Policy at the University of California, Davis and a Founding Director of US-Davis’s Institute of Transportation Studies. He and Deborah Gordon wrote Two Billion Cars: Driving Towards Sustainability which provides a concise history of America’s love affair with cars and an overview of the global oil and auto industries. Be sure to watch tonight when Daniel Sperling is interviewed on The Daily Show.

We decided it would be fun to ask Sperling some questions before and after his big television appearance. Below are the pre-show questions. Check back tomorrow to watch a clip and read the post-show interview.  Read other OUPblog posts about this book here.

OUPblog: Do you watch The Daily Show and have you ever fantasized about being a guest?

Daniel Sperling: Yes, I watch, but I never even fantasized about being a guest—even though all my friends and students now say I have reached the highest state of coolness; one (young) professor friend now says he idolizes me.

OUPblog: What advice have people given you about going on the show?

Sperling: Roll with the jokes, don’t even think about trying to be funny, be succinct, know your key messages, don’t wear white shirts or patterned jackets, have fun.

OUPblog: What is the one thing you would like people to take away from your interview?

Sperling: It’s time for all of us to engage in solving the oil and climate challenges and, to quote our president, yes we can.