BARBARA'S TCHATZKAHS

My blogger sista Layla, wrote such a good post in July 2007 about a subject which I have discussed with many bloggers during the last 7 years which I have been fiddling around with blogs. Blogging was a great way to keep my mind active, now that I am unable and diagnosed unfit to work. I am teaching myself CSS and other coding little by little. Old horses do learn new tricks! When I started blogging I refused to talk politics.  According to my therapists I still lack a lot of self-esteem. Over the years I was told by far too many people I was stupid, ugly, worthless, too intense, had a big mouth and ended up saying 'yes' to things any rational person would have said "NO WAY" too.   Undiagnosed PTSD had me doing irrational things that no one would accept an apology for.  I went out of my way to make people happy, to my own detriment. So my blog was a mishmash of this and that. Stuff I had written on a good day and so on. I helped out 2 websites for a ...

By Eric Goldman Davis v. Google, 09 CH 15753 (Cook County Ct. complaint filed April 9, 2009) Venkat sent a very interesting lawsuit this morning that raises some complex policy issues. The complaint alleges that Sean Healy created a blog at unknowncolumn.blogspot.com and posted defamatory content about speedskater Shani Davis' mom, Cherie Davis. [I believe the post in question is at http://unknowncolumn.blogspot.com/2006/02/memo-to-cherie-davis.html -- I'm not going to link to it, but it did show up as my first search result for "Cherie Davis"]. The complaint further alleges that Healy is now deceased, so he can no longer remove the content on Cherie's demand, and he did not have a "probate estate" to take over his blog. As a result, Cherie feels like she has nowhere to turn to clean up the alleged defamation, so she is suing Google's Blogspot for a takedown injunction. On the face of it, the lawsuit is clearly preempted by 47 USC 230, and Google oug...

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cross posted from Joe.My.God.: NYPD Sued Over Blogger Press Credentials Room Eight, the NYC politics site founded by Politico's Ben Smith, reported this weekend on a federal lawsuit filed against the NYPD regarding their refusal to grant press credentials to online journalists. “The system of granting press credentials in New York City has run amok and needs to be changed immediately,” said Norman Siegel, a prominent civil rights attorney who is leading the lawsuit. “We cannot allow the City of New York, the police department, to trample on the fundamental rights of journalists.” The lawsuit is challenging the NYPD’s “unconstitutionally vague” criteria for defining who is qualified to carry city-issued press credentials. According to the NYPD’s Office of Deputy Commissioner for Public Information, an applicant must submit three articles that have been published in print media within the last six months and a cover letter from a news director or editor. For individuals publishi...

Ellis Henican has always been a favorite reporter & columnist of mine. In this editorial he refers to the "Bathrobe Boys" - which is his term for Bloggers. I have to agree with him. I know of far too many bloggers who pinch articles without credit, bloggers who post stuff that has nothing to do with their blog (like revealing or sexual pics on a political blog that has NOTHING to do with the story) just to drive gawkers to their site or those plain out plaguarize others... or even themselves. (I had a professor in undergrad school who would do one production a year and put her name up on top - example: "PROFESSOR'S NAME PRESENTS" - HAMLET - in teeny tiny print: by William Shakespeare.) Then there's those who beg for money to go to blogging conferences or some event that they have plenty of money to pay their own way for, so they can share their oh-so-very-special viewpoint with " their readers ." These people believe they are so import...

Lawsuits Against Bloggers Seen Rising Since 2004, 159 Court Actions Have Targeted Citizen Journalists for Libel and Other Charges By HUMA YUSUF When Christopher Grotke answered a late-night knock on the door, he did not expect to find the deputy sheriff on his doorstep serving notice that he was being sued. Nor was he prepared for the charge: libel. Someone had posted a comment on his citizen-journalism Web site, iBrattleboro.com, stating that a woman in Brattleboro, Vt., was having an extramarital affair. The accused woman then sued Grotke and his Web site co-founder for failing to edit or delete the comment. The blogging community increasingly is subject to lawsuits and threats of legal action running the gamut from subpoenas to cease-and-desist notices. Since blogging became popular in about 2004, there have been 159 civil and criminal court actions involving bloggers, according to the nonprofit Media Law Resource Center (MLRC) in New York. Seven cases have resulted in verdicts agai...

Entire Liberal Blogosphere Actually Just One Incredibly Prolific Man Steve Benen, the liberal blogger who runs The Carpetbagger Report, has recently been discovered to be the sole author of almost every liberal blog dealing with U.S. politics on the internet, blog readers recently discovered. At first Benen was writing The Carpetbagger Report and allegedly guest blogging on sites such as TalkingPointsMemo, the Washington Monthly's blog, Political Animal, and Crooks and Liars. However, a visitor to TalkingPointsMemo, who saw a video of the alleged author and blog founder "Josh Marshall," immediately recognized him to be actor Marshall Mappschteen, with whom he had performed "Guys and Dolls" in college. A phone call to Mappschteen resulted in revelations that eventually uncovered Benen as the author of more than 260 liberal blogs. Subsequent investigation revealed that popular "bloggers" Atrios and Political Animal's Kevin Drum are actually fellow le...

by Noah Shachtman A study, written for U.S. Special Operations Command, suggested "clandestinely recruiting or hiring prominent bloggers." Since the start of the Iraq war, there's been a raucous debate in military circles over how to handle blogs -- and the servicemembers who want to keep them. One faction sees blogs as security risks, and a collective waste of troops' time. The other (which includes top officers, like Gen. David Petraeus and Lt. Gen. William Caldwell) considers blogs to be a valuable source of information, and a way for ordinary troops to shape opinions, both at home and abroad. This 2006 report for the Joint Special Operations University, "Blogs and Military Information Strategy," offers a third approach -- co-opting bloggers, or even putting them on the payroll. "Hiring a block of bloggers to verbally attack a specific person or promote a specific message may be worth considering," write the report's co-authors, James Kinni...

WHO'S WATCHING US ONLINE? "This is damning evidence that privacy is being destroyed by the very nations that proclaim to respect our rights," he said. "It is clear that there is a systemic failure of legal mechanisms to protect us against the emerging surveillance society. Those responsible for protecting our rights have failed to do so ... Australia, Britain and the United States have not only performed abysmally but they are embracing surveillance at an alarming speed." LINKS ON PRIVACY, THE FIRST AMENDMENT and THE INTERNET LEGAL ENFORCEMENT VERSUS DATA MINING JUST BECAUSE ITS LEGAL DOESN'T MAKE IT RIGHT BLOGGING SAFELY GOOGLE FINALLY! DECIDES TO KEEP IT PRIVATE! KEEP IT VERIFIABLE One for ATLAS : A statement that the plaintiff is a "Dumb Ass," even first among "Dumb Asses," communicates no factual proposition susceptible of proof or refutation. TEXT MESSAGE SNAGGING: CHILD'S PLAY OR CLOAK AND DAGGER by Bob Sullivan Lost in ...

"What is hateful to you, do not to your fellow man." — Hillel (ca. 50 BCE-10 CE) Are you for or against a blogging code of conduct and why? I am open to all arguments though I am leaning toward "for" a code of conduct right now. Though I have been accused of hate speech, I don't condone it, I don't condone lashon hara and I don't condone anything not backed up by fact. And even then it needs to be said tactfully or done for the right reasons. We live in a world of blog-voyeurs these days where anyone can say anything and pretty much get away with it. Ethics of Reciprocity are bent, twisted and spun to the needs of the verbal pornographer or harrasser, in my opinion What are your views? SOME RECENT STORIES I FEEL HIGHLIGHT THE NEED FOR A BLOGGING CODE OF CONDUCT: HARRASSED ONLINE! ORTHOMOM SUED BY GREENBAUM SET UP BY HER BOYFRIEND ON MATCH.COM DEATH THREATS AGAINST BLOGGERS NOT PROTECTED SPEECH CHEATER HUSBAND SETS UP GIRLFRIEND TO BE RAPED MAN CHARG...

Criticism or Blogging? Q. One employee maintains a blog which has made some unflattering remarks about the company. Can I take action against the blogger? A. Blogs are basically diaries which are made available through the Internet to all cyberspace. Some have a tight focus; others comprise an unstructured pastiche of personal, professional, and social commentary. The most popular ones are read daily by hundreds of thousands of readers and further clipped by other blogs, and so reach audiences in the millions; the majority are seen by a few hundred people each day. Recent months have seen a number of high-profile cases of bloggers who were fired for crossing the line of what was acceptable to their employers. In turn, a simmering debate has developed over the appropriate ethical parameters. Employer objection to blog content takes a number of forms: Content is unseemly. For example, a flight attendant was fired for posting photos that lacked the modesty and reserve which the airline n...

BLOGGERS: WELCOME TO "MEDIA" & YOUR ANONYMITY A couple stories worth sharing in readers to the status of bloggers and their anonymity came up in the news - and I want to share them with my readers and the blogosphere. Political Bloggers: Welcome to the “Media” Political Bloggers can now “breathe a sigh of relief” according to Eric Sinrod on CNET. A ruling just came down from the Federal Election Commission that classifies bloggers as media and volunteers - doesn’t matter if you’re a big operation or working solo. From the article: Political bloggers can breathe a sigh of relief, as the Federal Election Commission (FEC) has just resolved two complaints by determining that Internet blogging activities are not within FEC regulation because such activities fall within media and volunteer exemptions to the Federal Election Campaign Act. The first matter resolved was in regards to DailyKos.com: The site has charged a fee to place advertising on its Web site. It also has...

UPCOMING: THE HISTORY CHANNEL - BAND OF BLOGGERS About the Show: For the first time in history, modern technology is enabling viewers to experience war as it really is... directly from the battlefield. An ever growing band of military bloggers are using the internet, DV (Digital Video)cameras and cell phones to deliver honest, powerful and uncensored video. As part of a larger User Generated Content initiative, Band of Bloggers will be the site that will collect this raw and riveting "soldier generated content." CHECK YOUR LOCAL LISTINGS FOR DAYS & TIMES