Paul MacInnes offers a tongue-in-cheek welcome to new European Union laws that aim to outlaw misleading and aggressive marketing practices. “Will this,” he wonders, “mean an end to overexcited reviews on Amazon?” (“Free to rave”)

It seems that the EU’s “unfair commercial practices directive” is aimed at harmonizing EU standards to stop “sharp practices” such as “misleading and aggressive marketing”. As McInnes says, “If such a directive were thoroughly implemented, there would surely be no marketing left.” That would be especially true in the USA, where believing any marketing message demands a degree of credulousness that borders on insanity.

But “overexcited reviews on Amazon?” McInnes wonders whether banning misleading marketing would deny people a fundamental right:

“. . . the right to pen bogus and misleading reviews on Amazon. . . Practices like posting reviews of your own book that read: ‘Brilliant! I luv this! It has 2 be the besst novel about existential detachment since The Stranger! Er, lol!’”

On a more serious note, McInnes wonders whether regulations like this would really allow people to trust more in what they read. I wonder that too. After all, the best defense against hucksters and snake-oil salesmen isn’t a law; it’s a healthy dose of skepticism.

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