...to bloggers.

IMHO, this is important as our sources of news become more distributed among the people. Bloggers have been SLAPPed numerous times by more powerful interests. Most of these claims have implied some difference between a journalist and a blogger. IMHO, this act is important in that it will move the discussion toward the act of journalism, not the label itself, as a guide to applying protections.

The free flow of information Act.

News blurb:

http://www.webpronews.com/topnews/2007/05/11/congress-adds-bloggers-to-press-pro tections

An analysis by section:
http://www.boucher.house.gov/images/stories/Boucher/section-by-sectionffia.pdf

Thanks KSKD. I took the time to read this over and it really looks like a good step in the right direction. I am glad to see it getting bipartisan support. Grassroots journalism is as American as apple pie.

I'm really excited about this kind of thing going forward.

It's going to be an interesting ride for a while though. Seems we always build an establishment of sorts, no matter the medium. The majors in the blogging world are having a solid impact right now.

So far, they've been open to outside focus and really good about digging deep for those movements and people that could matter. Being able to read about and interact with these people, at a distance and on my time, is very empowering.

All good so far.

We've not yet lived through a major blog schizm yet, and that's gonna be the big test.

At some point, somebody is gonna go astray, or a challenger will rise to redefine things. How the growing community of citizen journalists and activists respond to this will really define the next 20 years or so.

When this happens, some law will get written and we shall see just how open it all remains!

For now however, it's all good. The amount of involvement we are seeing, via empowered people using an open Internet, is just great. To me, that means the fix is in, whatever it needs to be.

---This legal stand also is a strong justification for continuing forward with an open and non-discriminatory Internet. Should we allow traffic discrimination, we would lose the check inherent in the village atmosphere we've got right now.

Check this out:

http://www.syrinx.net/blog/robertkamper/a_map_of_internet_communities

It's a map of the Internet communities done by way of topological analogy!

And here are some visualizations representing the complex relationships forming right now:

http://www.visualcomplexity.com/vc/index.cfm?domain=Social%20Networks

http://www.visualcomplexity.com/vc/presentations/VC_MeshForum.swf

(right click to play this one)

Finally, this blog is an excellent tour of the whole data mining social tools scene.

http://datamining.typepad.com/data_mining/graphs/index.html

I lied! This one is very interesting. It's an excellent representation of how knowledge grows, the interconnects between diciplines, where focus is, etc...

http://datamining.typepad.com/photos/uncategorized/gallery6smll.png