Dogberry2 wrote: > The FTC (the U.S. Federal Trade Commission) has issued a set of > "guidelines" under which they can levy fines upon anyone who receives > free merchandise or other compensation from a company and then comments > on it on the Internet, whether in a blog, a consumer review site like > Amazon, or in a public forum such as this one, unless they make full and > adequate disclosure of exactly what they received from the company.
IANAL, but this will be overthrown in court. They are doing a good thing in spirit but using a shotgun when a precision weapon is needed. I am a beta tester. I do not get hardware for "free", I get it as compensation to hours of testing, reporting, and posting on the closed beta forums. Getting a "free" piece of gear in exchange for tens and in the case of the Touch, more like 100 hours of effort is not free. In the case of the Touch, the hourly rate is below minimum wage. For the Radio, the rate was better, it was closer to release shape when I got mine, but it sure didn't work perfectly the first weeks. And by the way, the developers who contribute code, at least the non-Logitech employees who are committers, are not 'given" the hardware, they earn it. A professional software engineer typically has a salary well over $50,000 a year, and in most parts of the country, its more like $100k. This means between $25 and $50 per hour of work. How much work needed to make a $200 consumer product stop being excessive? Pat -- Pat Farrell http://www.pfarrell.com/ _______________________________________________ discuss mailing list [email protected] http://lists.slimdevices.com/mailman/listinfo/discuss
