News: FTC to Regulate Bloggers!?

Today started out as a terrible day--I forgot my morning commute book at home. Oh well, it was not that great to start with and AM New York is given out for free at pretty much every Subway entrance. Buried in the backpages, almost overwhelmed by adds, I found an insightful piece of journalism. Sadly, I could not find a link to the article on the AM New York website, but I did find the original AP article that gave it birth: FTC Plans to Monitor Blogs for Claims, Payments.

The timing of this article is impeccable--as many of you know their has been some heated debate going on over at OF Blog in his "When Do You Stop Whoring Yourself Out". The claim was that many blogs have given up on posting meaningful content, and tend instead to just spam viewers with giveaways and contests. Well, the FTC is going to change all that; apparently even so much as posting a graphical ad will be enough to trigger oversight from Big Brother (FTC).

Personally, I believe accountability to be essential to journalism of any kind, but trying to tame bloggers is just going to be a huge headache for the government, kind of like trying to stop file sharing. Not only that, but American bloggers will be put at a disadvantage against international bloggers who are not held to the same standards--it just isnt' fair.

What are your thoughts. Should we be regulated? Do I now need to post a huge disclaimer instead of my colorful header? I don't disagree that the system should be systematised, but being regulated by the heavy hand of Big Brother is not the way to go. Good honest blogs are quickly known as such, and become magnets for like minded visitors. So to all you "whores" out there, your time is coming!