Jason Calacanis of Weblogs, Inc. posts a rational, albeit emotional, reply to Marc Canter's proposal to promote Bloggers writing product reviews for money (so long as its done transparently), which I covered here.

As noted in my post, and in a comment pointing to a TechDirt article, this isn't the first time the idea's been floated, in one shape or another.

Paying people directly to generate buzz for you in the 'blogosphere' absolutely should require disclosure (no disagreement there); I don't want to have to read through a web of "undercover buzz agents" to figure out what information I can really trust.

Unfortunately, nobody's ethics are beyond reproach today; the question simply naws away until opportunity inevitably strikes.

So, the question becomes, what is the trust system/mechanism that makes this a possibility? That is... How do I, as the user, vet you as an information source? (E-commerce -- SSL, TrustE, etc -- went through its version of a trust infrastructure buildout as well.)

Answering that should unlock all sorts of business models.