The Associated Press, Fair Use, TechCrunch, and Common Sense

That didn't take long. I had a post about The Associated Press' odd interpretation of 'fair use' earlier this week ("The Associated Press, Bloggers, Fair Use, and Common Sense" (June 17, 2008)).

I ran into this today:

"AP Violates Own Copyright Law By Quoting 22 Words from TechCrunch"
NowPublic (June 19, 2008)

"Well, this was bound to happen sooner or later. After The Associated Press issued its preposterous decision to charge for 5 word quotations of its stories, the blogosphere was quick to react.

"Now, the tables have been turned on The Associated Press, as internet news superblog TechCrunch (who have called on fellow bloggers to ban all AP content), is 'demanding justice' after the AP quoted a hefty 22 words from one of its posts...."

I think there's a good chance that the AP's goofy demands came from some top executive who:

• Is a few years older than I am
• Who has had his secretary answer his phone and do his typing for the last twenty years or so
• Who has heard of the Internet but never actually used it

As I wrote earlier: "No matter what The Associated Press decides, I'm not too concerned. There are many other news services out there, and I'm pretty sure that most are sharp enough to allow bloggers to send traffic their way."

An Avatar is not the Real Person, and other Observations from the Blogosphere

Once in a while, I run into a rich node of good sense. It happened again this morning.

"I have learned that an avatar is not the real person and that blogging is not a 'who can outblog who' contest. While recognition is nice, I am ultimately choosing to have my '15 minutes of fame' allotted elsewhere; perhaps in a way less self-serving. I have learned that I need to blog responsibly and that words have the ability to inflict a lot of damage; especially to our young people and to those who could possibly be 'on the edge'. I believe that I can do it without compromising my core self.

"I have learned that 'draft' is not a bad place for hot posts to cool off before making them 'go live' (or not). I have learned not to post anything that I wouldn’t say to a person's face, and if I happen to get 'called on it', it's 'my bad' for having posted it. And, I have learned just how big the world is, and that to step outside of my own sometimes, can be a very good thing.- Nards"

a comment by nardeeisms, in "What Have You Learned from Blogging so far?" (BlogCatalog discussion thread (started April 30, 2008)).

A Mess of Blogs

"Do you have an interesting blog? I want to read..."
BlogCatalog discussion thread (started April 17-18, 2008 - depending on what time zone you're in)

Someone asked "Do you have an interesting blog?"

Not surprisingly, quite a few bloggers in the BlogCatalog community thought so.

There's no theme, or pattern, that I can see in the blogs. They range from blogs that I write, to blogs that I'd never write.

Interesting place, the blogosphere.

Blogs and the Blogosphere: and the One Thousandth Post on "Apathetic Lemming of the North"

This is my thousandth blog post on "Apathetic Lemming of the North: A good enough reason to put several links about the Internet and the blogosphere in one post.

I'd hoped to find some up-to-date information about how many blogs there are now, but what I found was a information that's a few years old. Either people have stopped trying to keep track of the blogosphere's population, or this isn't one of my better days: maybe both.

Here's what I found:

---

"Yahoo cites huge potential online ad market in declining Microsoft’s bid" InternetRetailer.com (February 19, 2008)

It looks like there are one billion (American definition: 1,000,000,000) people using the Internet these days. That's a lot of people.

---

"Measuring the Impact of Blogs Requires More Than Counting" Wall Street Journal (May 26, 2005)

There were tens of millions of blogs in 2005: about 3.5 million of which were active; with between 350,000 and 900,000 posts per day.

Michael Vick: Who Needs a Trial?

One of the wonderful things about the blogosphere is that opinions can be published here, even if they haven't passed an editorial board, or originated in one of the traditional centers of culture and refinement. In America, that's New York City, Washington D.C., Los Angeles, and to a lesser extent San Francisco and parts of Oregon.

Here are examples of the blogosphere's freedom at work.

In case you haven't read enough about the pre-trial convictions of Michael Vick, here are a few of the blog posts on the subject.

• The Vick Case…doesn’t innocent until proven guilty still apply? (July 27, 2007)
  
• What Happened To "Innocent Until Proven Guilty"? (July 28, 2007)
  
• Michael Vick: Innocent Until Proven Guilty...right? (August 1, 2007)
• Is Michael Vick Innocent Until Proven Guilty, or Should He Go Straight to the Dog House? (August 03, 2007)
• Innocent Until Proven Guilty (August 3, 2007)

This is an unusual post for "Apathetic Lemming of the North," so here's the background:

Last Saturday, I heard that the Atlanta Falcons owner, Arthur Blank, said publicly that Michael Vick lied about Vick's involvement in a dog-fighting operation.

Mr. Blank seems to base his conclusion on the fact that a dog-fighting operation seems to have been conducted at a residence owned by Mr. Vick. The owner has more to go on, of course. The men, who almost certainly were directly involved, accused Mr. Vick of participation, with lurid stories to back up their claim.

I do not blame Mr. Blank for his public accusation of Mr. Vick.

Mr. Blank is following a long tradition of executives and business owners, making irrational and draconian decisions, based on limited and dubious information.

Mr. Blank may even be right.

For those who have been away from Earth recently, Michael Vick is a football player who has been accused of involvement in a dog-fighting enterprise on a property he owns. As far as I can tell, there is at best limited evidence of Mr. Vick's involvement, apart from his ownership of the house and grounds where the dog-fighting and training took place.

Last week a news report said that Mr. Vick would most likely pead guilty.

I have been appalled at coverage of Mr. Vick, and his treatment to date. He's lost valuable promotional contracts, been effectively banned from the career he chose, and now has been accused of lying, on the basis of the accusations of two men who admit they participation in criminal behavior.

Mr. Vick may be guilty, but what's been done to him puts me in mind of the 'he's guilty: we'll hang him now, and have a trial later' situation some movies use.

Particularly after the Duke debacle, this guilty-until-proven-innocent situation disturbed me. But I didn't have a blog with a defined topic that allowed discussion of the Michael Vick phenomenon.

Finally, I had an idea: Look up other blogs about Mr. Vick's troubles, and put links to them in an ALN post, with a longer-than-usual discussion.

Update, August 20, 2007, 1:14 pm central time USA - I heard on the news that Michael Vick has entered a guilty plea: apparently on the charge of interstate movement of dogs for gambling purposes. More charges may be brought, of course.

What I said about the treatment of Vick in news media, and by the Falcons owner, stands. Guilty until proven innocent is what legal systems derived from the Napoleonic Code use. We've got innocent until proven guilty as a principle in the USA, at least theoretically.

Bloggers of the World, Unite!

A single blog is just one of a vast and growing number of post collections that range from drivel repositories to compendiums of profound observations.

I think one blogger can make a difference, but that's a different topic.

This post is about bloggers getting together in a common effort.

Specifically,

Bloggers Against Abuse
September 27th, 2007

I heard about it on BlogCatalog.com (where else?), in a discussion titled "You Can Be a Part of Blogging History."

The idea is that, "On Sept. 27th, blog about putting an end to some sort of Abuse (you decide what kind of abuse to blog about)." Quite a good idea: coordinating great numbers of bloggers, to create an environment, albeit short-lived, in which a single message will stand out.

I appreciate the touch of giving individual bloggers a choice in what sort of abuse to lobby against.

I'll have to deal with an unruly little urge to speak out against the Abuse of Cucumbers. Particularly the barbaric practice of peeling innocent cucumbers, and using the peels to repel ants.

I'll leave it up to you whether the latter represents abuse of cucumbers or ants.

Fear and Blogging

A blogging community I belong to, BlogCatalog, had a curious discussion yesterday: "MoonDanzerDelivers is Being Deleted."

As nearly as I could tell, the author of a blog had decided to delete her blog after receiving two or more anonymous calls. She perceived at least one of the calls to be threatening.

As her blog took a strongly anti-Bush stand, many of those who participated in the discussion decided that "they" are threatening her. "They" seem to be government agents, a government agency, or something of that sort. Probably the United States government, but that wasn't entirely clear from their statements. Not to me, but then I realize that there's more than one government on Earth.

After a quick look at her blog, taken before she took it down, I'm pretty sure that I'd find very little in it that I agree with.

However, there was nothing in what I saw that suggested that she was seeking the overthrow of the United States of America's government, seeking to betray classified information, or engage in other illegal acts.

She was quite within her rights to maintain that blog.

Just as I have a right to maintain a blog that is unlikely to win me a speaking engagement with Multidisciplinary American Studies at UC Berkeley.

I am disappointed that "Moondanzer" deleted her blog out of fear.

If she believed that the anonymous calls were from some crank, then a reasonable course of action for her would, in my opinion, be to contact local law enforcement and her telephone service, in an effort to stop the calls, and determine who the caller was.

(That's what I did, when my family started getting vaguely threatening calls. The calls stopped, but we never did determine exactly who was making them.)

If she believed that the anonymous calls were from some shadowy government agency or a rogue agent, or whatever equivalent terms there are, I can understand why she might have been hesitant to call the police. "They" might well have the police under their collective thumbs.

Her best course of action, if that is what she believes, might have been to contact as many news services as possible. In her position, I'd have probably started with the New York Times, the Washington Post, and every other major metropolitan paper in the country. A government conspiracy to suppress free speech would be news.

I've yet to use publicity in quite that way, but believe that it's a reasonable approach. Think of the implications of a government conspiracy in America to silence bloggers. A real conspiracy, that is. A story like that would have been NEWS!!!

Instead, she deleted her blog. I can understand her decision, in a way. She said that her husband worked with the FBI, and she apparently feared that his security clearance would be violated. Somehow. I had a very hard time following the logic of her blog posts.

In my opinion, fear is a good indication that some matter must be attended to. It is, however, not a good reason for taking action.

Deleting a blog because of two or more anonymous calls was not, I think, reasonable.

All that has been accomplished is that one person has engaged in self-censorship, and made it a little easier for some to believe that "they" are out there, lurking in the shadows and threatening the lives and welfare of helpless humanity.

Word of the Day, and Blogs about Blogs

It was bound to happen, sooner or later. Someone has spun in to the blogging about blogging about blogging about blogging spiral.

A post in What's Wrong Around Us?, Sunday, July 22, 2007 Quote of the Day has a link to Narcissus-X, "a blog entirely about the blog itself."

Narcissus-X is

• Brilliant!
• Incisive!
• Profound!

And I should know: I wrote it myself!

Getting Attention

There's not much point in having a blog if nobody knows it's there.

One way to attract visitors is to buy a few minutes of air time and advertise during the Super Bowl. For those of us whose budgets are smaller than the GNP of an average Mideast country, there are online resources.

I register on DMOZ, Google (yes, I know that's a little redundant), and a few other directories. It's also a good idea to get involved with blogger communities like BlogCatalog, Technorati, and Digg. They usually expect bloggers to add something, like the Technorati Profile, but that's a small price to pay for getting involved in the blogosphere.