Nonsense on the web

Writing about "The Coming War on Blogs," James D. Miller is way off target. He speculates that blogs pose a threat to existing media; therefore, MSM will fight back by using their lobbying power to pass laws and regulations that will thwart bloggers in three areas:

1. Campaign finance reform.
2. Libel law.
3. Copyright law.

I believe he is correct that bloggers will be challenged on all three fronts, but he is whistling in the dark if he thinks those challenges will all come from MSM. Campaign finance challenges will come from political parties, candidates and activists, and they will be based on the sort of abuses practiced by South Dakota Politics. Nobody in MSM wants judges defining bloggers vs. legitimate media.

Libel law challenges will come from people who have been libeled. Bloggers can't argue that they are important and influential but that they should be exempt from libel law. And it's just nonsense to say that MSM can handle the burden of defending themselves from libel suits more easily than bloggers can. Libel is finely tuned to the resources of the defendant. The more money you have, the more the plaintiff will ask for. Most bloggers are, in fact, less exposed to libel than MSM because most bloggers (1.) don't have large enough audiences to causes significant damages and (2.) don't have enough resources to pay for the damage they do cause.

Copyright law challenges will come from writers, artists and, yes, MSM. Assuming that bloggers profit from their parasitical relationship with MSM (MSM reports, bloggers pontificate) existing media will look for ways to be compensated for the expensive, difficult work of reporting that fuels so much of the blogosphere. Rather than organize to defend their right to profit from the work of others, bloggers would be wiser to start doing their own reporting.