Source: http://punditmania.blogspot.com/2005/
Timestamp: 2017-04-30 10:48:57
Document Index: 83260887

Matched Legal Cases: ['art 1', 'art 2', 'art 3', 'art 4', 'art 5', 'art 6', 'art 7', 'art 8']

PunditMania: 2005
Good God it's Google
Steve Lohr in his November 6, 2005 article at the NY Times, "Just Googling It Is Striking Fear Into Companies" writes about the fact that even the largest retailer in the US, Wal-Mart, is wary of Google these days. Read the article to find out why.
11/06/2005 04:55:00 PM
VoteLaw has a posting about a one-page order just issued by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit which has "declined to reconsider a decision requiring the FEC to write new rules to carry out a 2002 campaign finance law". Reference is made to a Boston Globe AP article of October 24, 2005 titled "Appeals court declines to review decision on campaign finance rules".This is a development of utmost importance to blogging. What is the background?The Bloglines Blog (see also WingedPig) has a posting about the fact that the FEC (Federal Election Commission) has been reviewing regulations concerning political speech on the Internet, including blogging.The Committee on House Administration held a hearing on the topic on September 22, 2005.The issues involved are found in this statement by Committee Chairman Robert W. Ney which we have excerpted:"The Committee is meeting today to hear testimony on the subject of regulation of political speech and activity on the Internet....The Bi-Partisan Campaign Reform Act (McCain-Feingold or BCRA) required the Federal Election Commission (FEC) to develop regulations to implement the Act. The Commission determined that Congress did not intend for BCRA to cover Internet communications and, therefore, adopted regulations that exempted them.Congressman Shays and Meehan, believing the FEC regulations did not follow the intent of BCRA, sued the Commission. The Court [see material below] agreed with the Congressmen, and ordered the FEC to rewrite the rules.As a result of this lawsuit and Court decision, the FEC was forced to rewrite the rules that cover communications on the Internet. That new rulemaking began in March 2005.While this new rulemaking was going on, some Members of Congress were making clear that they did not intend for BCRA to cover the Internet, and that they did not want the FEC regulating these communications. In March, Congressman Conyers and 13 of his colleagues wrote to the FEC seeking an exemption for web logs or blogs....Identical bills were also introduced in both bodies to preserve the exemption – in the Senate by Minority Leader Harry Reid and in the House by Jeb Hensarling (R-TX). Their bill language was adopted by this committee, and included in H.R. 1316, the Pence-Wynn bill, reported by the committee on June 8, 2005.These bi-partisan congressional endorsements of the exemption show there still some issues on which both sides of the aisle can agree. We’ll later hear from two witnesses who operate blogs, one conservative and one liberal, who probably do not agree on anything except that they do not want the FEC to be regulating what they say or do on their websites.The debate here then is not between Republicans and Democrats or liberals and conservatives. Instead, the debate here is between those who favor regulation and those who do not...."The court decision in question was described at the hearing by Scott E. Thomas, Chairman, Federal Election Commission as follows [we quote footnote 1 at the linked source]:"The U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia concluded that the Commission’s broad Internet exemption would “severely undermine [the Federal Election Campaign Act’s] purposes,” and would permit “rampant circumvention of the campaign finance laws and foster corruption or the appearance of corruption.” Shays v. FEC, 337 F. Supp. 2d 28, 70 (D.D.C. 2004), aff’d, 414 F.3d 76 (D.C. Cir. 2005), petition for rehearing en banc filed (Aug. 29, 2005). Though the district court held some 15 regulations invalid, it nonetheless indicated that pending resolution of the litigation and adoption of needed revisions by the FEC, the challenged regulations remain in effect. Shays v. FEC, 340 F. Supp. 2d 39, 54 (D.D.C. 2004)."This is the court decision which the D.C. Appeals Court declined to reconsider.Here are the issues:Thomas points out in his testimony that the Internet should be regulated by the BCRA because the Internet is becoming a major player on the political scene.Vice Chairman Michael E. Toner of the FEC testified that political speech on the internet should not be regulated and that the BCRA was never intended to apply to the internet.Commissioner Ellen L. Weintraub of the FEC emphasized that "the focus of the FEC is campaign finance. We are not the speech police." Hence, Weintraub indicates that the proposed rules will in fact regulate the internet, but that substantial exemptions will be made.Bradley A. Smith, Professor of Law at Capital University Law School, and former Chairman of the FEC, testified that the "the on-line community has reason to be concerned" and that "there is a sizeable and powerful lobby both in and out of Congress that clearly wants to regulate the internet....A regulated internet will strengthen those who already have political power and influence; a deregulated internet will boost the influence of ordinary Americans who just want to play by the rules...." Smith particularly points to the inherent conflicts created between internet regulation and press freedom, the resolution of which is a controversial matter. For the position of blogs, see The Volokh Conspiracy.Lawrence Noble, Executive Director and General Counsel of the Center for Responsive Politics, testified that: "There is little doubt that the Internet can be used in much the same way television, radio and the print media have been before; as an avenue for the spending of large amounts of undisclosed soft money to finance various forms of political ads aimed at electing or defeating Federal candidates. "Michael J. Krempasky of RedState.org provided testimony from one side of the political spectrum of blogging and Duncan Black of Eschaton provided testimony from the other side. Both stated that blogs should be exempted from the BCRA.Some links to the history of this topic are:CNet News.combeSpacificVolokh ConspiracypbaHQCDTIn the AgoraMichelle MalkinDemocracy ProjectInstaPunditAsk Jeeves BlogCaptain's QuartersBainbridgePattericoNewspaperindexGiven this court decision and barring Congressional action, there will now be much, much more about this matter on the blogosphere, you can be sure.Technorati Tags:internet law, political speech, campaign contributions, blogs, blogging, bloggers, freedom of speech, freedom of the press, FEC, Federal Election Commission, Campaign Finance Law, Campaign Reform Act, BCRA, legal, House Administration, Committee on House Administration, McCain-Feingold, Pence-Wynn, communications, Internet, Kaulin, web logs, campaign finance, online community, internet regulation.Crossposted to LawPundit..
Virginia Heffernan has a nice July 22, 2005 article at the New York Times on podcasting entitled The Podcast as a New Podium. Here is a sample paragraph:"On "Catholic Insider" Father Vonhögen leads audio tours of Rome, which he often visits, and parses the Vatican's reaction to the new Harry Potter novel; he also boasts about how many subscribers he has, as all podcasters do. Recently he told a reporter: "On Sunday, in my church, I can reach about 500 people. But with my podcasts I can reach about 15,000 listeners or more."".
"In order to provide the layout options in our newly released Blogger Images we had to wrap all posts in a tag."
Reactions: Blogger Dashboard Update Feature Finally Fixed
7/17/2005 09:56:00 AM
Blogger Blog at Blogger Buzz
We spotted a new blogger blog at Blogger Buzz.
3/15/2005 07:44:00 PM
As we have recently stated, we have shifted from Google to Yahoo as our search engine of choice because of the fact that Google searches were too often resulting in sites that LINK to the desired page rather than the page itself.A commentator informed us as to why the current Google search algorithm is faulty, precisely because it places too much emphasis on links, rather than paying more attention to what a site is about, even at the simplest level of the URL itself.This emphasis on links has resulted, at its worst, in what is called Google Bombing, utilizing the principle that if enough sites link to any given site using the same link word or phrase, then that site will come up first on the Google results page.Some links to Google Bombing are.Adam Mathes - the original Google BomberWord Spy - definition of Google BombingA superb lengthy article by John Hiler on Google Blombing at Microcontent News - The Online Magazine for Weblogs, Webzines, and PublishingInfothought - Seth Finkelstein's blogThe Underground Dailectic - blogLinks and Law - links
2/26/2005 03:41:00 PM
Reactions: Blog-Fearing ALA President Bitten by the Blogs
The Law Pundit has frequented libraries since his early days and has quite a private library of his own, so that he is certainly no enemy of good libraries.However, we see that Google's digitization of millions of books for online access by "the masses" has the poor library people up in arms. Indeed, particularly the rise of the masses in blogs seems to be a cause for the librarians' wrath.Michael Gorman, president-elect of the American Library Association, and Dean of Library Services, Madden Library, California State University, Fresno, has an appropriately blog-fearing article in the Library Journal of February 25, 2005 entitled Revenge of the Blog People!.Gorman has made the mistake of attacking bloggers (this is generally done only by those who really understand nothing about blogging), and also the present posting is his reaping of the fruits of the seeds he himself has sown.Here is how Gorman describes blogs:"A blog is a species of interactive electronic diary by means of which the unpublishable, untrammeled by editors or the rules of grammar, can communicate their thoughts via the web. (Though it sounds like something you would find stuck in a drain, the ugly neologism blog is a contraction of "web log.") Until recently, I had not spent much time thinking about blogs or Blog People."What a stupid thing to write. It is rather hard to believe that the president-elect of the ALA could be this out of touch with reality. Not having learned from experience, he writes the above article defiantly after bloggers had already criticized him previously for questioning the usefulness of Google book digitization, by which he called into question the usefulness of digital availability of such information to all citizens. Some people still do not understand "democracy" in its core value.With uninformed people like this at the head of the main US library institution, the demise of libraries is not far off. Mark our words that the next decades will be marked by massive library closings since all the world will doing their research on the screen. Blog Bitten People such as Gorman will have accelerated this development.The entire controversy reminds us of the Egyptology library at the University of Trier in Germany, our former abode as Lecturer in Law. That library is kept unter lock and key like the safe of a bank to make sure that unauthorized persons do not obtain access to books which might be used to upset the dusty applecarts of the virtually mothballed academic disciplines which deal with this region of the world.Freedom of Information is simply not something relished by information monopolists.Gorman wirtes:"In the eyes of bloggers, my sin lay in suggesting that Google is OK at giving access to random bits of information but would be terrible at giving access to the recorded knowledge that is the substance of scholarly books. I went further and came up with the unoriginal idea that the thing to do with a scholarly book is to read it, preferably not on a screen. It turns out that the Blog People (or their subclass who are interested in computers and the glorification of information) have a fanatical belief in the transforming power of digitization and a consequent horror of, and contempt for, heretics who do not share that belief."Horror, no. Contempt, yes.
2/26/2005 03:33:00 PM
Reactions: BlogBib Goes Biblio Blog
BlogBib, An Annotated Bibliography on Weblogs and Blogging, with a Focus on Library/Librarian Blogs..., by Susan Herzog, Information Literacy Librarian @ Eastern Connecticut State University has an excellent series of postings on blogging in 8 PARTS.Part 1: IntroductionPart 2: Articles & Interviews About BlogsPart 3: BlogBib: Blogging @Your LibraryPart 4: BlogBib: Blogging ToolsPart 5: BlogBib: Select Librarian/Library BlogsPart 6: BlogBib: Books on BloggingPart 7: BlogBib: Studies on BloggingPart 8: BlogBib: Presentations on BloggingThis is must read about blogging.
The FeedBurner Weblog - Burning Questions
We have just subscribed to Burning Questions the offical FeedBurner Weblog, which has 934 subscribing readers as of this date +1 for our subscription. Take a look. The last posting there was on RSS Metrics and Podcasting.
2/17/2005 06:06:00 PM
Reactions: Giving Google the Goodbyes
What has Google recently done to its search algorithm? It is a disaster.There is an old wisdom which holds that "power corrupts" and "absolute power corrupts absolutely". And Google appears to be corrupted - absolutely.Whereas most of the world has increasingly been singing the praises of Google, we have become increasingly wary of this search engine whose overly smart but increasingly complicated algorithms are perhaps beginning to run asunder.Until about a week ago, the entry of "lawpundit" into Google expectedly returned the blog "LawPundit" as the first search listing, as it should be, since there are no competing websites or blogs with that name.What we now find is that the entry of "lawpundit" into the Google search box no longer turns up that blog but an absolutely confused mess of websites that LINK to the blog. There appears to be no rhyme or reason to the listing whatsoever and many of the sites who do link to our blog are not very important, since some of them are our own LESSER, seldom used, blogs. Or to put it another way, when looking for the blog LawPundit on Google, Google is useless. Even keying the words "LawPundit" and "Blog" does not provide the desired result. Something has gone very badly bonkers in the algorithm of the Google search system in the last week or two.Our tolerance level for nonsense is low. We do not wait long. We have installed both the Yahoo and MSN toolbars and are going to give Google the boot. Yahoo's first four results for LawPundit are perfect:1. http://www.lawpundit.com/blog/lawpundit.htm - the LawPundit blog page2. http://www.lawpundit.com - the LawPundit website index page3. http://lawpundit.blogspot.com - the previous LawPundit blogspot location4. http://feeds.feedburner.com/lawpundit - the FeedBurner RSS feedThat's the way it should be. For any entered artificial keyword such as lawpundit, we - at the least - expect the search engine to find the comparably named URLs and RSSs and rank them ahead of sites that merely LINK to them. God forbid.Goodbye Google. Yahoo is now our toolbar of choice. It has some new features we were not even aware of, such as an anti-spyware button which permits immediate scans of the hard disk. Terrific. And the search results are just as good, if not better now.Giving Google the Goodbyes....Crossposted to LawPundit.
2/17/2005 04:46:00 PM
Via the German law blog Streitsache, we point to a site which automatizes the making of buttons for blogs. See the Brilliant Button Maker by LucaZappa.com.
2/05/2005 01:52:00 AM
NOFOLLOW - a new attribute against spam
The Google Blog has the simplest explanation we have found of the new "nofollow" attribute on URLs as a means of preventing comment spam and similar URL spam abuses.
Blog-Fearing ALA President Bitten by the Blogs
BlogBib Goes Biblio Blog
Giving Google the Goodbyes