Copyrights and Blogs.

We are about to enter the marshland of copyrights, a wet land of confusion that lies between the land and the sea.  On land, things are on firm ground of fair use.  In the sea, what sinks and what doesn't is clear cut.  In the marshland, nothing is certain.

As I mentioned before, value-added blogs and feeds are coming our way.  But copyright issues could sink it before it gets here.  Last night, I asked Dave Winer how he would feel if I created an RSS feed of his posts I liked.  His answer was no, and I suspect majority of bloggers will feel the same way.

Imagine a newspaper of blog posts delivered to 100 million readers three times a day.  While some might think this is impossible, I have walked though most of the serious technical and business issues and have concluded that such newspaper is not only possible, but potentially very profitable.

Biggest unknowns are the copyright issues.  It's not just the bloggers and how they feel about commercial syndication of their posts, but owners of the material bloggers frequently refer to or embed into their post either partially or as a whole.  It's a big iceberg that could turn any ship into Titanic.

[Don Park's Daily Habit] 
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Future of Blogs: Small Businesses.

Business market, particularly the small business market, is where most of the action and the money will be in the future, not personal blogs.  Benefits of blogging technologies, such as ease of update, content syndication, moblogging, audblogging, fotologging, and social networking, will allow small business owners to explode into the web like never before and propell blogging into a day-to-day necessity for survival. 

For proper perspective, think about how little hole-in-the-wall stores so common in Asia might use blogging technologies to improve their business.  Then scale it up and expand across the globe across language boundaries.

[Don Park's Daily Habit] 
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Steve Gillmor: "Back to watching Scoble narrowly escape being fired..." [The Scobleizer Weblog] 
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Phil Wolff, in predicting the syndicated blogosphere will reach 300 million feeds over the next three years: "I assume AOL, Microsoft, Yahoo!, and Terra will turn on blogging tools in the next 18 months, and 10% of the online community (70 million people) become bloggers." [Corante: Corante on Blogging] 
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Stuart Henshall: "Corporate Blogging is just the edge of a revolution that will harness the collective intelligence of organizations in new ways." [Corante: Corante on Blogging] 
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"Not A Dollarshort: AOL Journals" [Daypop Top 40] 
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Non-profit blogs.

Nice story in Wired News by Katie Dean on the Advocacy Project's use of weblogs to support non-profit activities.  They are empowering Interns with blogs to tell stories of their field work. 

One of the challenges for a non-profit engaged in educational and technical aid is communicating the problem and how they are solving it in a way that resonates.  These very human stories of the experiences impassioned volunteers could only come out directly.

...Weblogs are an excellent tool for nonprofit organizations, according to Ross Mayfield, CEO of Socialtext, which makes Web publishing tools for groups.

"Weblogs are the cheapest way for an individual or organization to communicate," he says. "It's a more natural, human voice than what someone could generate with a press release."

Mayfield says blogs can also help nonprofits keep their donor base and supporters updated. Plus, "there's a wide body of fairly influential and growing body of (weblog) readers that pay attention on a regular basis."

[Ross Mayfield: On Blogging] 
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AOL to Introduce Moblogging, Too!.

'AOL Journals' To Bring Blogs To Millions

"Whatever you call them, the idea is a Web page that people can update frequently with commentary and links to material they find interesting online. Blog software automates posting the commentary, images and links.

AOL will give members three ways to update their blogs -- through an online template with blank boxes for text input, through AOL's instant-messaging system or by telephone. The phone option will be available only to subscribers to the extra-cost "AOL by Phone" service, who will be able to leave voice messages that will be posted as MP3 sound files.

To publish via instant messaging, AOL members will send a text message to an IM software 'bot' -- or automated script -- that will post the message to the user's blog. The IM posting will work only with AOL's internal messaging system, not its free AOL Instant Messenger program. Robinson said this would be a quicker way to publish than navigating to a Web page to type into a form: 'You might have a fleeting thought you want to capture, and you don't want to take the extra few seconds to go and open up the publishing interface.' " [The Washington Post]

More details about AOL's upcoming integration of blogging software into the company's software. I still think this is going to be big, as will the RSS trail that follows. I didn't realize that they are going to integrate pictures, but of course they are because it makes perfect sense. Mo' moblogging down the road.

That idea has me quite intrigued because I've been following Aaron Schmidt's photoblog of pictures sent from his cell phone. It's fascinating to watch his daily life through it. I like that I can see Aaron's friends (none of whom I know), his cute puppy, and snapshots of the places he goes, so I can't imagine how much more enticing it would be to find feeds of photos and blog posts in my aggregator daily. And audio files posted by phone? You mean I could hear my niece in my aggregator? I am so there!

[The Shifted Librarian] 
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Blawgaroonie.

These lists of new blawgs just don't quit, and the ranks keep getting more and more diverse and exciting. See for yourself by paying a visit to this week's additions to the B&B blawgroll:

Academic

• Carol Irvin teaches real estate law at Cuyahoga Community College in Cleveland, Ohio.
• Tom Mayo writes the HealthLawBlog when he is not busy teaching at Dedman School of Law, SMU. [Via Ernie Svenson]

Political

• Presidential candidate Dennis Kucinich also is a Democratic Congressman from Ohio. [Via Doc Searls]

Practicing

• Hey, great news for us denizens of the Ninth, and all the rest of you as well: Bart is blogging the Ninth Circuit at The Limit of its Logic. Someone had to do it. I'm assuming you're a lawyer, Bart; please correct me if I'm wrong. [Via the SoCalLawyer]
• Chaesq. is a lawyer in New York, a Buffy fan, and the author of the well-named MC Estoppel. [Via Blawg.org]
• Steve Eugster practices in Spokane, WA, and blogs about his work, life, politics and more. [Via Blawg.org]
• Ooh, this is kind of exciting: the 260-lawyer law firm of Holland & Hart is blogging health care law at its Rocky Mountain Health Care Blog. To my knowledge, this makes Holland & Hart the largest law firm to date to have a blog. [Via Blawg.org]
• Perfectly Sassy is a lawyer in the Philippines. [Via Blawg.org]
• David Scott is blogging charter shcool law at the blog of the CharterSchooLaw.com site. [Via the Blawg Ring]
• Doug Simpson writes Unintended Consequences, a "Weblog focused on law, regulation and disruptive technologies." [Via Ernie Svenson] Doug also writes a blog about "the geography, culture and people of the Connecticut River Valley." Doug served for many years as in-house counsel to a large insurance company.
• The Sophorist is an Arkansas Missouri attorney with a flare for irony. [Via Ernie Svenson]
• The law firm of Wiggin & Dana LLP is blogging franchise law at, appropriately enough, their Franchise Law blog: what could be sweeter than the doughnut wars? [Via Ernie Svenson]

Clerking

• Bill is a federal judicial clerk in Philadelphia. [Via Howard Bashman]

Learning The Craft

• Angel is in law school down in Ernie's neck of the woods. [Via Blawg.org]
• The ASU Law Devil is a group blog by 2Ls at ASU. [Via Blawg.org]
• Minh starts law school in Denver this fall. [Via the Blawg Ring]
• Jason Nemes is blogging the Sixth Circuit between his studies at Brandeis. [Via Ernie Svenson]
• Patent Defect will start law school in the fall. [Via Blawg.org]
• Anthony Rickey is ready to start law school at Columbia in the fall, even though he appears full well to recognize it's "Three Years of Hell to Become the Devil." He's already reading his Civ Pro text (really A, there're a lot of other options!), and for good measure has fired up a group blog for members of the Columbia Class of 2006. How about that? [Via Blawg.org]
• Andrew Sinclair is in the 2004 class at BU and a former Gaucho. [Via the Blawg Ring]
• wburtis writes the great new Mac Justice blog, and is starting law school at the Washburn School of Law in Topeka, KS [Via Ernie Svenson; isn't it heartwarming to watch Ernie literally cuddle up with his new Mac toys?]

Blawgers At Large

• Evan is blogging cyberlaw issues at FreeLaw.au. [Via Blawg.org]
• The author of Misplaced Thoughts is studying (hard now, hopefully) for the bar exam. [Via the Blawg Ring]
• There's a blog about the acronymically acrobatic USA PATRIOT Act, PATRIOTWATCH. [Via Blawg.org]

Integrating

• Ron Friedmann is a lawyer who now runs his own law technology consulting firm, Prism Legal Consulting, in Arlington, VA. It's key when those who know law and technology are able to offer that knowledge to their colleagues in the legal profession. The disconnect too often is too wide. [Via Ernie Svenson]

Conglomerates

• The German American Law Journal (English Edition) is a group blog "for information sharing in the areas of German and American law, mainly where the two intersect, vary or intrigue." [Via Blawg.org]
• Omni Legal News is the blog of LawTalkers, a site for news, rumor, information and gossip about the legal world. [Via Blawg.org]
• One Big Blawg is a promising-looking new Glenn Garnes project (launched July 11), a collaborative site where lawyers can share knowledge about the jurisdictions where they practice. The site has many features and goals, so here's more from Glenn.

Truckstops

• I see Chad at Detod now writes a blog with news about the site, such as its well deserved recognition as Jerry Lawson's Netlawtools MVP site of the month.
• The Virtual Chase now has a guide to RSS Newsfeeds for Law.

[Bag and Baggage] 
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Karl-Friedrich Lenz: What Does European Law Say About Blog Ownership?. [Der Schockwellenreiter] 
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Google Tricks & Tips - Stuff you Bloggers need to know. Steve Covell has a good post on how to use Google to search just blogs, or just law blogs.  Inspired by his love of Google (and his specific recommendation) I have purchased Google Hacks, which contains a wealth of information on how use Google productively. [Ernie the Attorney] 
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Why can't my aggregator do this?. Why can't my aggregator do this? Why doesn't your aggregator do this? to my knowledge, no aggregator does this... Everyone's... [Teal Sunglasses] 
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Parliament goes wireless for bloggers' summit... [Channel 'social_software'] 
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Announcing The Blog Cooperative. via Web Dawn - Rebirth of the Social Marketplace: I launched a new site today, The Blog Cooperative (www.BlogCoop.com). The idea was inspired by my previous post about liquid democracy in business and by an email conversation with Seyed Razavi, creator of BlogShares. Other inspirations and ideas are from... [Channel 'social_software'] 
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Kathleen Parker: Blogs breaking logjam of journalism [Daypop Top 40] 
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Terry Teachout on the launch of ArtsJournal's new blogs [Be sure to check them out - they just launched today]: "Here I am, finally. I've been talking about starting an arts blog for the past couple of years, but I never got up the nerve to do the dirty work... So when artsjournal.com kindly offered to do it for me, it took me about three seconds to say yes." [Corante: Corante on Blogging] 
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