No, I did not and would not give permission for copying of VF reviews or forum posts elsewhere. It's up to the individual who WROTE the review to decide whether or not they wish to share it elsewhere, and if I ever get such a request I always forward it to the reviewer so that the reviewer can decide.
On the Amazon review, that looks a little different--we are listed as an Editorial review. I'm not sure about their policy on Editorial reviews or how that was added (can the publisher post or request that Amazon post an editorial review?). I noticed they did not use the reviewer's name, either. Has anyone else noticed VF reviews appearing as an Editorial Review on Amazon? I don't think a VF review should be listed this way, even if they had gotten permission. First, VF reviews are consumer reviews just like any others on Amazon, and more importantly, since VF does not post one single review of a workout that represents the consensus of the site--a lone positive VF review could be selected and posted in this way for a workout that had mostly NEGATIVE reviews on VF, yet on Amazon it would appear that the VF editorial consensus was entirely positive. That bothers me a lot, and is something I need to contact Amazon about.
We used to have something in the footer of review pages stating that reviews could not be copied or used elsewhere w/o the permission of the reviewer. I will make sure that gets added to our new review section too, and I am also going to add something to our vendor/commercial posting page making it clear that permission of the poster/reviewer must be obtained before any reviews are copied or used elsewhere. I would have thought that was obvious, but evidently not.
__________________
Wendy Niemi Kremer
Community Manager
DISCLOSURE: I have a professional relationship with a seller or producer of fitness videos or products. For details, please see my profile.
|