Monday, December 28, 2009

Confused about what I need to disclose

Despite several hours of research (trying to understand) on the FTC change in the disclosure laws, I am still no closer to actually knowing if I need to disclose the fact that I belong to an esoteric Order when doing my occult book reviews.

If I understand the law change correctly, most of my stuff would fall under CMP. ly 0 classification, and my involvement in an esoteric Order does not have to be disclosed at all.

The only disclosures required are if I was given a copy of the book I was reviewing, or got paid by the author or publisher to do the review, or owned stock in the publishing house. The change in the disclosure laws seem to be concerned only with material gain and interest.

(For those who do not know, recently I was accused by David Griffin, the head of an esoteric Order that resorted to the use of lawyers to try to put other Orders out of business, of creating politically motivated book reviews. Supposely if you do not agree with the opinions of his membership's opinions about a book, you are guilty of political warfare. There was also the fact that I did not think his own book was the best thing since white bread---and the fact that his Order was bragging about his book selling for a thousand dollars on the used market is not an acceptable reason to do a new review of an out-of-print book.)

I asked the administration and writers on Helium if they knew the answer. I really would like to know before the first of the year, considering I am going to be making my full disclosure statement live then (I am still twiddling with it). As for Associated Content, they seem happy with compliance with the CMP. ly system.

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