Month: November 2012

I’d heard of the German ruling, but hadn’t realised it meant that editing with a commercial COI, violating the bright-line rule, could be a legal hazard in the EU, violating the Unfair Commercial Practices Directive. In Germany your competitors may be able to sue you for it, and in Britain you could be prosecuted. That’s as well as the media hanging you and your client out to dry.

(The Signpost article claims with no justification that the ruling “complicates” the issue of COI editing, rather than making it much simpler, i.e. damn well listen to us and don’t do it. Some PR people may not like it, but that’s rather a different thing.)

Yet another PR agency is blatantly busted doing the thing we patiently warn them against over and over, with the consequences we warn them of over and over.

The apparently-unanimous industry response, per PR Week: “It’s all Wikipedia’s fault, they should make it easier for us to spin.”

PRCA in particular appear to have turned their opinion 180° since June, when they heartily endorsed the CIPR/WMUK guidelines.

Guys, this really doesn’t help your case.

(CIPR have strongly dissented. PR Week didn’t get around to asking them.)

“it does get to the heart of the accuracy and lack of control of social media” – yeah, it’s accurate and you don’t control it. — Denny de la Haye

Update: Followup from PR Week. They’re also doing a print piece.

For the curious: the official Wikimedia blog post on Internet Brands’ legal action against all rational thought has a string of updates.