penalties

Federal Trade Commission establish new rules beginning with December 1 for bloggers, forcing it to disclose any payment they receive for reviews. This applies for advertisers as well as for celebrities. The penalties are up to $11,000 for the violation of these rules. Richard Cleland, assistant director for the division of advertising practices at the FTC, said that "given that social media has become such a significant player in the advertising area, we thought it was necessary to address social media as well."

While FTC is a specific US institution, I do not understand how these rules will be applied to the bloggers belonging to other nations, that comply with their own nation rules. Besides, as stated by Rick Calvert, chief executive of the blogger conference BlogWorld & New Media Expo, there are "tens of millions of blogs, podcasts and other forms of new media content out there and growing every day," so it is difficult to enforce the FTC rules.

Everyone was waiting for a come back of the Italian team after the groups. But, after a very difficult and very lucky qualification from the groups, the old team of Italy tried to resist during its match with Spain and to decide the winner during the penalties. And it succeeded. But this time the luck left Italy.