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If bloggers and twitterers want to hide behind shield laws that protect journalists then they get all of the baggage that comes with that label. They don't get

by evgen 17y ago

If bloggers and twitterers want to hide behind shield laws that protect journalists then they get all of the baggage that comes with that label. They don't get to decide that they are journalists one day (when they want the protection that comes from that label) and are not journalists on the next (when they want to chat up the movie they just saw for free without mentioning that they were paid to do so.) I would be more than happy to proclaim that nothing mentioned on the internet is journalism unless it came from someone that would have been classified as such before the internet came into existence, but I think that a vocal minority would bitch and moan about such a distinction. The internet's chattering classes created this problem in the first place by proclaiming blogging to be journalism and worthy of the protections provided to people working in this field and I am enjoying the prospect of watching them being forced to live up to the responsibilities that come with these rights.

jerf 17y ago
You seem to have it out for "bloggers". That's a class distinction so worthless I'd say you should discard it; it's just people, talking, as silly a classification as "phoners". You want to talk entirely about journalism, then go pressure the rule makers to limit this to journalism. (The fact that you can't work out a definition of journalism, which you allude to, is your problem as someone who wants to regulate it, not mine. I'm underwhelmed by the need for this law even in old media.) Meanwhile, a Facebook user who doesn't give a shit about whether you consider them a "blogger" and wouldn't know what an "A-list" was if you hit them with it, and ultimately isn't worth your derision for the mere fact that someone somewhere thinks it should be called "blogging" instead of just "talking", is going to incur liabilities for a crime they have no reason to believe is a crime. Again, this law isn't limiting itself to "journalism" anywhere that I can see. (I say "liability" because clearly the government is not going to be able to perfectly enforce this, but I consider a poorly-enforced bad law worse than a well-enforced one; a democracy has ways of dealing with the latter.) Letting someone split your world into "bloggers" and "nonbloggers" is a terrible move. It's just people, talking. Some use the phone, some talk over the air, some post comments on Hacker News. There isn't a separate division of people called "bloggers" that are some sort of separate species that should have special restrictions placed on them. It's just a power ploy by people who want you to let them impose their power trip on just folk.

by evgen 17y ago

jerf 17y ago

You seem to have it out for "bloggers". That's a class distinction so worthless I'd say you should discard it; it's just people, talking, as silly a classification as "phoners". You want to talk entirely about journalism, then go pressure the rule makers to limit this to journalism. (The fact that you can't work out a definition of journalism, which you allude to, is your problem as someone who wants to regulate it, not mine. I'm underwhelmed by the need for this law even in old media.) Meanwhile, a Facebook user who doesn't give a shit about whether you consider them a "blogger" and wouldn't know what an "A-list" was if you hit them with it, and ultimately isn't worth your derision for the mere fact that someone somewhere thinks it should be called "blogging" instead of just "talking", is going to incur liabilities for a crime they have no reason to believe is a crime. Again, this law isn't limiting itself to "journalism" anywhere that I can see. (I say "liability" because clearly the government is not going to be able to perfectly enforce this, but I consider a poorly-enforced bad law worse than a well-enforced one; a democracy has ways of dealing with the latter.) Letting someone split your world into "bloggers" and "nonbloggers" is a terrible move. It's just people, talking. Some use the phone, some talk over the air, some post comments on Hacker News. There isn't a separate division of people called "bloggers" that are some sort of separate species that should have special restrictions placed on them. It's just a power ploy by people who want you to let them impose their power trip on just folk.