Out of Character

I started listening to your show after JDCorley announced he was going to talk about FantasyCraft on it over at the Haven. I'm not a big fan of FantasyCraft, but I am a fan of Jason's posts, so I was curious to hear his voice. I'm happy to say that I enjoy your podcast overall and have added it to my regulars.

I generally agree with you guys on roleplaying stuff, but I as motivated by what seemed to be your general disdain for this new blog disclosure law. It really sounded to me like you were obsessing over the letter of the law and completely ignoring the good of the spirit of the law. You were focusing on outlying cases and extreme situations, in effect munchkining the law to show how it was broken. I just don't see the big deal in people being required to say that they got some free product if they are in a position to influence others' purchasing choices. Ron said that you don't have to do this if you are actually reviewing it, which invalidates the repeated Roger Ebert examples. I don't see the burden of throwing in one sentence to be clear to your readers the source of the product you are vaunting. Sure there are a lot of grey areas, but use your common sense. This law is meant to go after people who abuse the social networking nature of the internet.

My two cents on that issue. Otherwise, really enjoyed the rest of the discussion.

Walker, great to see you here, and glad you enjoyed the show!

What Ron said was that the law (regulation, really, but that's a distinction only lawyers really care about) only applies to "word of mouth" reviews. My point was that what is a newspaper movie review but the film critic's "word of mouth" except in print? And if the film critic from the newspaper has a separate blog, as Ebert does, certainly his opinions there aren't distinguishable from his opinions in the newspaper (except insofar as he actually has MORE room to express himself!) So how do the regulators intend to differentiate between Ebert-the-word-of-mouth-blogger and Ebert-the-newspaper-reviewer? It is a mystery. A dumb mystery. :)

But you are right! Disclosure is a very minimal standard. Maybe people DO think Ebert pays for his own tickets. Maybe they might think of his reviews (newspaper or otherwise!) different if they knew he didn't. And maybe that's a goal worth chasing. Thanks for the comment!