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.
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Blogs Bloggers BCRA Campaign Finance Law FEC Freedom of Speech & Press

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.com
beSpacific
Volokh Conspiracy
pbaHQ
CDT
In the Agora
Michelle Malkin
Democracy Project
InstaPundit
Ask Jeeves Blog
Captain's Quarters
Bainbridge
Patterico
Newspaperindex

Given 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.
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Test of Link Feature at Blogger

This is a test to see how the new link feature at Blogger works Link to This Page at LawPundit.

Technorati adds Blog Finder

Technorati has added a Blog Finder (beta) based on its tags directory. The HTML they use for that is different than for the normal tags previously used.
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LIFT Text Transcoder - Web Pages in Text-Only Version

The LIFT Text Transcoder makes it possible to convert web pages to text-only versions. The manual states:

"LIFT Text Transcoder (or transcoder) is a web application that converts a web page into its text-only version on-the-fly by eliminating all page layout that is present in the original page and by hiding many accessibility defects.
The transcoder is useful for the website visitor, since it removes some accessibility issues and small defects like missing image ALTs or forms that are not properly linearized or flash objects. It can be used also by the web developer to determine if the reading order of the information presented in the page makes sense when read in the order that would be followed by a screen reader or speech browser.

LIFT Text Transcoder (enter a URL at that page to try it out) is especially useful for people and situations where:

- graphics cannot be seen (e.g. blind persons, text-only browsers, ...);
- sizes of the page elements have to changed (e.g. a low-vision persons that maximizes the browser windows to enlarge its contents; a PDA user who has to fit everything on a small screen);
- size of text that has to be changed (e.g. a low-vision person; a presenter that has to project a web page to an audience via a projector);
-links and buttons have to be easily located and operated (e.g. a person with motor disabilities that cannot move his/her hand with precision, like somebody with a broken arm);
-form fields need to be easily layed out to be used (e.g. a low vision person using a screen magnifier that restricts his/her field of vision)."

The options that are available for each text-only page so produced are:

"Change the current font size: larger | default | smaller
Current color mode is Black on White, other available modes: Yellow on Black | Black on Cream
Show textual links as buttons
Do not move navbars
Open not handled documents directly
Hide the Text/Graphical View Panel
Hide Text Only Options
Open the original version of this page."

Cross-posted to LawPundit.
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Google Blog Search

Google has launched a blog search function at

Google Blog Search.

The same results in somewhat different format can be obtained at the Blogger Blog Search Beta, which is of course not limited to Blogger blogs.
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RSS Readers

Chris Sherman reviews RSS Readers in Choosing an RSS Reader, a September 1, 2005 article at Search Engine Watch.
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Blogging in Malaysia

The Oxford Business Group has an August 22, 2005 article entitled The New Blogocracy covering blogging in Malaysia.

An excerpt from that article states:

"The recent news that a group of five online diarists, or 'bloggers', participated in a 24-hour 'blogathon' to raise money for charity highlighted the important role these online journals now play in disseminating information to the Malaysian public."
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Apophenia and Blogs - The Bridge between the Digital and the Physical

Danah Boyd, a former Googleite and Bloggerite now a Yahootite, blogging at zephoria ipseity, has the blog motto "apophenia :: making connections where none previously existed ". She studies "how people negotiate their presentation of self in mediated social contexts to an unknown audience" in media such as blogs. She is "fascinated by moments when people don't realize the bridge between the digital and the physical." Those out there who think that digital communication is not "real" human communication should read some of these posts. Great Stuff.
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Podcasting as a New Podium

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.""
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Solving Template Problems Arising since the Introduction of Blogger Images

The introduction of Blogger Images has caused some template problems for numerous users because as Blogger Buzz writes:

"In order to provide the layout options in our newly released Blogger Images we had to wrap all posts in a

tag."

This tag is NOT found in your templates, but shows up first when you view the source code of one of your Blogger blog pages.

The solution is to go to your Blogger blog dashboard and set the newly added "Enable float alignment" option in the blog settings to NO.

That will solve template problems but will create left and right alignment problems for the new Blogger Images feature.

Hat Tip to FamilyGreenberg.com.

Blogger Dashboard Update Feature Finally Fixed

The Blogger Dashboard update feature has finally been fixed, after months and months of being disabled. Bloggers can now once again tell from the Blogger Dashboard how many posts they have posted for each blog and when their last posting for each blog was made. It used to also be possible to see how many words a blogger had posted, but this feature appears to have been discarded for this newly fixed Dashboard version.

Blogger Blog at Blogger Buzz

We spotted a new blogger blog at Blogger Buzz.

Google Bombing

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 Bomber

Word Spy - definition of Google Bombing

A superb lengthy article by John Hiler on Google Blombing at Microcontent News - The Online Magazine for Weblogs, Webzines, and Publishing

Infothought - Seth Finkelstein's blog

The Underground Dailectic - blog

Links and Law - links

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.