Bloggers At War

My horoscope for today:

“A fabulous chance to earn more money and gain greater prestige may come your way – but you will need to be on the ball to grasp the chance. It is also possible that a new job may mean relocating to a new place which you will be quite happy about.”

Hmm…

Remember, the daily perv link is no more. No more, I say! You are not following this link, and you did not discover it on this site. Got it?

The war against blogging continues, with this story about a blogger in Maine being sued by the state because his comments may have adversely affected the local tourism industry. The story is a bit more complex than that, though, since the blogger may have infringed on a copyright (bad!) and engaged in libelous or defamatory behaviour (perhaps not so bad, depending on the context). While I have my suspicions about the guy, I come out in favour of his right to bitch. His opinions are sacrosanct; end of story. But his use of the state’ s iconic images might be a problem.

Sorry, people, blogging –or some variant of it– is here to stay. What we are seeing with these developments is the mainstream struggling to place the new media in a context understood by the old media. In the short term, the status quo will win out. But ultimately, how society deals with multipolar criticism, copyright, anonymous defamation and unfettered, truly free speech will have been changed forever.

As for me, I continue to use this medium to test and refine ideas. Sadly, I still have one foot in the old media. Thus, my droogs, I’m beta-testing yet a new op-ed, this time on Opal-gate, here.

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