'Flogs' Illegal in UK, Rest of EU
A recent Wall Street Journal article describes a seeming grass-roots website created by angry renters seeking to make their elected representatives aware of their unhappiness about a planned legislative bailout for homeowners who can’t pay their mortgages.
But in fact AngryRenter.com was created by publishing magnate Steve Forbes and FreedomWorks, a conservative group affiliated with a former majority leader of the House of Representatives, the newspaper reported in a front-page article last week.
It made no mention of any legal issues created by the website, which has apparently persuaded some bona fide renters to take up the lobbying cause along with their seeming compatriots. But similar so-called flogs (fake blogs), AstroTurf (alleged grass-roots campaigns run by corporations) and lobbying campaigns featuring sock puppets (individuals who post under numerous aliases) are now forbidden in the European Union, under a new law that is just now taking effect in the United Kingdom, according to the BBC.
“The EU’s Directive on Unfair Business-to-Consumer Commercial Practices, a far-reaching attempt to regulate the whole relationship between firms and their customers, makes all these online tricks illegal,” the broadcaster reports in a detailed article about the practices.
Fines of $10,000 or more, both for companies and for individuals, and prison time are possible, for those who are found to have violated the provision. However, it is questionable whether the directive can be effectively enforced against a growing barrage of such practices, according to the BBC.
“If it’s the sort of business that will take a risk and not worry about the customers that they trample on, then they may never be caught,” says attorney Philip Carnell of CMS Cameron McKenna. “But upstanding companies will know that they cannot market themselves online without being very clear about what they are doing.”
It isn’t clear, though, that AngryRenter.com would fall afoul of the new EU directive, even if it was focused there instead of here:
“FreedomWorks puts its copyright on AngryRenter.com and discloses on the back pages that it is the source of the effort,” the Wall Street Journal writes. “The site is nonetheless designed to look underdoggy and grass-rootsy, with a heavy dose of aw-shucks innocence.”
