Basically, the rules don’t specifically mention bloggers, but advertisers in general – and they’ve got to be upfront anywhere where editorial content is actually advertising content where they’ve been paid. So if I give you £50 to blog about my album then I guess that counts as an advertisement and you’re supposed to identify it as such or face time in chokey or a big-ass fine.

As for affiliates… well… who knows? Technically, you don’t get paid by the company to blog – because you only get paid for sales/sign-ups. So probably (and I ain’t no lawyer!) I’d say that such relationships don’t fall under the auspices of this law.

I’ve got a theory that building a hosted affiliate system that tracks incoming traffic through referring URLs rather than bouncing through a 3rd party site would be a shit-hot way to build clean links, and that would neatly sidestep all of this shit. But what do I know?

And would the UK rules apply affiliate links aswell, or just paid posts?