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12 Laws Every Blogger Needs to Know
An anonymous reader noted a nice piece discussing 12 laws bloggers need to know which includes explanations of matters including domain name trademarks, deep linking, fair use of thumbnails and so on. It's worth a read for most anyone who puts words on this here interweb.
As it rips off its list of steps for incorporating directly from nolo.
I RTFA ... it simply restates the bleeding obvious. In a nutshell:
1. Don't steal. This includes trademarks, images, links, pay your taxes, and the other "gray" areas.
2. You are responsible for your content. Even the comments. And don't count on being counted as a journalist.
Kind of like the universal laws of physics. Here are the laws every blogger should know:
1. Nobody wants to read your blog.
2. 95% of bloggers are illiterate.
3. Yes, the top blog spam garbage makes money (digg etc.) But do not quit your day job because, honey, you ain't gonna make no money. The days when "AllAdvantage" paid you to surf your computer are over.
If your panties are all wet for blogspam, then go read Roland's technology trends or digg.com
Who uses e-mail anymore?
Actually, I do. *please mod interesting, please mod informative*
On a more serious note:
I believe in [property rights for] real assets that have finite supply, not intellectual assets that can have near infinite supply.
This is a subtle but significant leap a lot of people don't notice. (Think Fifth-Axiom-ish.) The information *itself* has infinite supply; the good of excluding people from it, does not. My desire not to have my writings infintiely copied conflicts with your desire to copy them. STOP WHAT YOU'RE DOING, GET THAT CURSOR AWAY FROM THE REPLY BUTTON. Note, I didn't say that my (arguably huge) desire justifies enforcement of a right to it; I'm just saying that you should not equate the good of the information, with the good of excluding access that information, and that you should be able to justify why all rights must be articulable in terms of physical objects if you want to use "infinite supply" arguments like that.
Apology to Ubuntu forum.
Sometimes I edit people's comments for very innocent reasons, some include : html markup somehow made it in, correcting a spelling error, fixing a broken link. It never dawned on me to have a terms of service that says I can and will edit comments as needed.
I'm really not worried about it, but if patent trolls exist, there's a good chance that you-edited-my-comment-so-ill-sue-you'ers also exist.