New EU Directive Could Affect Writers

I was concerned to read this post by Dr Suzanne (Suzie) Harris in her S Files blog about the new Unfair Commercial Practices Directive, which is due to come into force across Europe in December 2007. I've copied Suzie's first paragraph below:

When I received my copy of the Writers' News Magazine today I was shocked to read about a new law that prevents us as authors reviewing our own books online. If you are an author or publisher that reviews your own work on the 'net you could run into some serious trouble. On the 31st December (in some reports it's the 12th of December) 'The Unfair Commercial Practices Directive' comes into force.

Having read Suzie's post, I wanted to find out more about this myself. A little online research unearthed a useful article on the Media Entertainment Lawyer website. One quote from this seemed to sum up the situation to me:

The UK is still drafting its version of the legislation but amongst the activities that will certainly be prohibited is a business falsely representing itself as a consumer. Flogs or fake postings to newsgroups will certainly fall foul of this prohibition.

As I read it then, there will be no bar on authors reviewing their own books as long as they make it clear in the review that they are the author. It will, however, outlaw the (allegedly common) practice on Amazon and similar sites of authors giving their books a glowing review under a false name - representing themselves as ordinary consumers, in other words.

Banning this practice does not seem unreasonable to me, though there is an argument that it should be left to the sites themseves to police (as Amazon.com has done) rather than bringing in the lawyers. Unfortunately, also, there will still be no redress for authors who have been given deliberately poor reviews by rival authors or publishers.

In her blog, Suzie also expresses concern that the Directive may impact on sites such as PayPerPost, which pay bloggers to review other websites, products and so on. It will certainly stop bloggers doing this covertly, but if the blogger makes clear that the post is sponsored, I can't see there will be any problem. It is significant that PayPerPost and similar sites have all now moved to a policy of full disclosure, possibly in anticipation of the new law.

The article in Writers News Magazine referred to by Suzie in her blog post also hints that in future there may be moves to prevent friends giving one another's books glowing reviews. Truthfully I can't see this happening, though. The process of "you scratch my back and I'll scratch yours" has being going on among authors and publishers almost since books were invented. And how could you "prove" that one person is a friend of another, and that this has influenced their review? I'm sure Trading Standards Officers, who are responsible for implementing the present laws in the UK, would feel that they have many more important things to do with their time.

Overall, then, I'm not going to lose any sleep over the new Directive. The practices being barred are not ones that would be used by any ethical writer anyway, and if the "cheats" on sites such as Amazon are barred, it can only be good news for the rest of us who would not stoop to such deceptions.