The UK is making it illegal for purveyors of goods and services to portray themselves as consumers and post good reviews of their own wares on Internet.

Perhaps counterintuitively, given PFF's normal skepticism about regulation, this strikes me as a legitimate use of government power. One of the premises of the reliance on the market is that information can be made available, albeit often at a price. A creative contribution of the Internet is to make consumer info available from peers at a low cost. So poisoning the source is an offense against the community, and (worse) against the market!

I know, I know, five of my colleagues will now point out to me that such pollution is an inherent part of the world, and that the market will provide solutions in the form of paid-for guides that are guaranteed against such taint. They are right, of course, but the peer reviews are also nice, and it seems to me that a strong statement that this is unacceptable behavior is a good thing.

Similarly, one would like to see statements that illicit file sharing is an unacceptable affront to the community, replacing the academicians habit of glorifying free riders as freedom fighters.

posted by James DeLong @ 8:11 AM | Internet: P2P, Search Engines...

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