Last week there was some talk of a young blogger being fired from Techcrunch for crossing an ethical line.

The blogger in question is said to have solicited expensive gifts from the companies he was assigned to report on.

Techcrunch head honcho Michael Arrington addressed the issue in this article after firing the young man in question and deleting all Techcrunch posts written by him.

In general terms the young writer writer was paid to report on tech startups in America.  Nowhere in his job description was any allowance for enticing a company to pay for a new computer if he gave them a favorable write-up

There's an added element to this that we in Australia might not be quite so tuned into...the fact that the Federal Trade Commission in the U.S. brought in mandatory disclosure rules back on December 1 2009.

Techcrunch, anyway, were required under the new rules to address the young blogger's antics.

With the shift to greater amounts of online media, some consumer-protection laws once applying just to print and media now also apply online.

It also puts some online businesses on notice to lift their game.

One article on the net shows its impact on the affiliate marketing industry in the States.

Perhaps this has been long overdue.  While parts of affiliate marketing are run ethically, there are other sections little better than Ponzi schemes or pyramid scams.

However, it affects blogging, too.  This next article shows the effect on bloggers and even celebrity endorsements.

These rules are for America, but perhaps it's good if we're aware of them here in Australia too.  We'll probably come across our own version of them sooner or later.