__/ [ BearItAll ] on Tuesday 08 May 2007 16:15 \__
> Roy Schestowitz wrote:
>
>>
>> New bill to give bloggers same shield law protection as journalists
>>
>> ,----[ Quote ]
>> | The House of Representatives has amended the Free Flow of Information
>> | Act of 2007 to include provisions to protect bloggers from being
>> | required to divulge their sources under certain situations in the
>> | same way as journalists.
>> `----
>>
>>
>
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20070507-new-bill-to-give-bloggers-same-shield-law-protection-as-journalists.html
>> http://tinyurl.com/2955qd
>>
>
> You mean that they can legally talk absolute bollocks?
>
> It does sound a bit risky in that absolutely anything could be said, and
> repeated. A clever virtual orator could persuade people to do all kinds of
> stupid things, like join cults or terrorist organisations claiming the
> words are someone elses.
>
> Hitler's only real talent was his ability to win over the listeners, a good
> speaker, that was all.
>
> These Bin Laden folk, talking ordinary kids into strapping bombs onto
> themselves and blow themselves and a few strangers up. Has to be some
> clever talkers to persuade them to do that. "A source close to Bin Laden
> said...." that gets them round ay FBI visitors because they only have to
> say 'I have a legal right to keep quiet about my source'.
>
> So rather than protect bloggers with various laws, I think it is much
> better and safer in world terms to cut the hands off all bloggers. See if
> there is room for that in an ammendment would you.
One issue has become that one blog cited another for backing, but none is
peer reviewed so-to-speak. This leads to broken telephone effect. But
journalists are no saints either. Some time ago we relied on information
from a major Australian publication. It turned out that it was wrong and we
were told off in a Linux.com article. At least the reference trail made it
clear who was to blame.
--
~~ Best regards
Roy S. Schestowitz | Run a Linux server, then learn how to knit
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