| HoloMAXX Trying to control Review Sites? |
| Written by Benjamin A. Hunter | |
| Friday, 29 November 2002 | |
|
We recently contacted HoloMAXX, owner of HoloMAXX trade, of which web addresses will not be provided (since we will not advocate them), regarding the possibility of receiving one of their products for review. While our initial response from them was promising, we soon got the following email: __________________________________
Hi,
Thank you for your banner advertising offer, we'll take it into consideration and let you know.
I can send you a Novasonic, however recent transgressions that have taken place with between hTRADE and another review site have forced us to be less lenient with our sponsorship policy. Before I send you anything, I'd like to present the new reviewer agreement:
1) Any form of sponsorship through hTRADE is regarded as a marketing/advertising effort. The reviewer must accept the fact that conducting a review on any of our products is equal to writing an advertisement. To that end, hTRADE reserves the right to modify or decline the publication of any review, for any reason.
2) We encourage fair and unbiased reviews of our products; however, before any review takes place, we require a specific outline of the proposed review, comparison products and testing environment. We may require changes to any aspect of the review in order to comply with statement 1.
3) The act of confirming this Agreement via email and accepting a product to review from holoMaXx TRADE implies your acceptance of the afformentioned provisions, and is equal to a signature and date.
4) This Agreement is a legally binding contract, which is upheld according to the laws of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania.
5) If any provision of this Agreement is deemed invalid or unenforceable by any jurisdiction or government agency having jurisdiction, that particular provision will be deemed modified to the extent necessary to make the provision valid and enforceable, and the remaining provisions will remain in full force and effect.
If you are comfortable with this agreement, then please indicate that on your reply. This is nothing personal, and I doubt we'll have any problems. Unfortunately, some review site operators fail to realize their position in the industry, and that has made it necessary for us to bring our lawyers into the mix. =(
Happy Thanksgiving! ^_^
KITTY
__________________________________
(click read more to continue article)
This agreement, in effect, asks us to give up all editorial rights to our own article and let HoloMAXX control not only whether or not we post the article, but what we put within it. Yes, if we say a product has a particular flaw, they would have complete control to tell us not to post the review -- or worse, tell us to change the review so the flaw was not mentioned. GeekExtreme is a fair and unbiased review site. We do not accept editorial control over our products. We never will. HoloMAXX now accuses us of being unable to be fair and unbiased, because we will not accept their agreement. It should be noted that we have always been fair and unbiased, such to the point that we have not even bothered to edit or delete negative comments made about us on our own site. Is this not fair? What HoloMAXX asks for is unreasonable, and we won't stand for it. HoloMAXX has now threatened to "warn" the visitors to their website about us, and their "affiliate websites" about us, since I told them I would be letting the users of GE know about their tactics. I say let them. I'll hereby warn you now. This is a general warning, and you are free to draw your own conclusions: Anyone who wants complete editorial control over an independant review site has something to hide. 'nuff said. |
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| Last Updated ( Friday, 29 November 2002 ) |
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