The Becker-Posner Blog

Lanny forwarded this interesting article by Richard Posner, which contrasts the blogosphere from mainstream media on economic and legal perspetives, finding that the blogoshpere should not be regulated as is mainstream media.

best

Prof. Biff

The Becker-Posner Blog:
"Blogging, Spam, and the Taxation of Internet Transactions Posner The rise of the Internet has created a host of social, economic, political, and regulatory issues, a few of which we address in this week's postings. (Another, at present under consideration by the Supreme Court in the Grokster case, is copyright infringement by means of file sharing.) One that is naturally near to our heart concerns proposals to regulate blogging, either formally or through voluntary adoption of ethical standards. Many blogs are electronic counterparts of newspapers, magazines, and other advertiser-supported mainstream media, and the argument is that since the mainstream media have adopted ethical standards concerning such matters as reliance on anonymous sources and retraction of errors (with electronic media such as television stations subject to formal regulation), so should bloggers."