Am I the only person terrified at the ramifications this latest salvo against journalistic integrity will have on the continued mixture of payola/blackmail that is the world of gaming reviews today?

Seriously, your ability to succeed as a website hinges on your ability to have reviews out on day one if not earlier. Your ability have early reviews is dependent on receiving advance copies from the publisher. Now, your ability to get advance copies is dependent on staying in the publisher's good graces, which currently means you can't do anything to piss them off.

There's already the very real spectre that bad reviews make them less happy with you. I was astonished to see the (apparently COMMONPLACE) passive-aggressive threats taking place, where publishers "allow" good reviews to go online early, but bad reviews "must" wait. I cannot fathom how they have this degree of control over companies who are supposedly far enough out of the publisher's pocket to provide an honest review of their product, and it scares me.

Now they'll use legal pressure against bad reviews, under the already-straining-under-its-load-of-hyperbole banner of "piracy"? Bad times ahead, my friends.