Slashdot Mirror
A Proposal For Unionizing Bloggers
mikesd81 writes "Coloumbia Journal Review writes about the possibility of unionizing bloggers. Chris Mooney writes 'Yes, dear reader: the Bloggers Guild of America may be on its way. The dispute between screen and television writers and media conglomerates has its roots, after all, in the Web.' He says, then, they get zero compensation for their products being distributed over the Internet. 'Bloggers often earn that same salary. There are exceptions, of course, those fortunate few who have become quasi-celebrities in their own right and found themselves, and their sites, snatched up by major media companies,' he goes on to say. He also adds that a bloggers guild could protect a blogger's intellectual property and help ensure they're compensated for it."
Who first reads that word as something to do with electric charge?
Hail Eris, full of mischief...
E pluribus sanguinem
Its the best idea ever.
That way we can abuse their rights and they can go on strike!!!
liqbase
Methinks someone has been dealing with too many jolts at work recently...
It shouldn't come as a shock that people who simply post their opinions publicly so that someone will listen to them would only be paid what those opinions are worth.
they get zero compensation for their products being distributed over the Internet
The vast majority of them earn every penny of that.
You know what i journal is right? Well a blog is a stupid name for the exact same thing but on the interwebs...
The human who coined this term should be shot.
You can't take the sky from me.
Unions in the United States are messed up. Totally beyond repair. Utterly unrecognisable as something that actually works to protect workers. The last thing anyone should be doing is thinking of creating a new Union in the United States.
The US needs to look at how Unions work in Europe, particularly places like the UK and Ireland. No closed shops, no ridiculous hold over employers, no work to rule ethic. They have modern unions that achieve a sensible balance between workers and employers. And no Teamsters.
Another money-grubbing group wanting to milk anything creative for any possible dollar it may earn, while making use of and promoting imaginary property. What happened to unions being for the working class person getting stepped on by big business?
Great Intellect...
What. The. Fuck.
Honestly, you make up a word for "people writing regularly writing online and letting others comment on it" and all of a sudden you think you're something special.
Am I missing something?
Now they can go questing and conduct raids against their greatest foes! In all seriousness though, this seems rather silly to me. Does this mean that people making their emo blogs on livejournal or something are going to demand compensation for the traffic they generate? The article speaks of IP, but the vast majority of blogs definitely don't deserve the "intellectual" part of it, hehe. Also, the whole point of these blogging sites is that they can make a profit, they wouldn't exist otherwise... The host is not going to give bloggers free hosting and *pay* them for their work as well. If someone has a popular blog, I suggest they host it themselves and make money off ads or something.
Weaksauce as they say...
Blogging is a voluntary activity generally conducted solely by the individual doing the blogging. Whether to charge or not is an individual choice.
Also, scientists generally contribute far more intellectual energy to submitting their publications and they aren't paid for it either (although it is considered somewhat of a job expectation). As for protecting their IP, their articles generally cease being their own IP once a journal gets ahold of it, upon which it controls distribution and very often ransoms access to the public, making a profit for the journals - but not the scientists who wrote the paper. I think researchers may need to unionize earlier than bloggers if abuse of IP is what you're concerned about.
Are unions even needed these day? Don't new laws protect workers in the way unions did a hundred years ago? If you don't like your job, find a new job! If you aren't getting paid enough, find a new job! If your employer is discriminating against you, or the workplace is unsafe, then let existing laws take care of it! Unions for the most part suck IMHO.
Religion for nerds. Stuff that really matters
...when it's members aren't actually employed. I don't mean bloggers don't have jobs, just that their job isn't generally blogging. A union exists to give workers collective leverage against their employers, who stand to lose economically if a strike is called.
Who loses money if the bloggers go on strike? For that matter, if they weren't blogging, how would we even know they were on strike? By the lack of updates? I doubt the print media would care enough to inform us.
A guild in the sense of a trade organization might make sense, but a union?
You might just as sensibly organize the elephants and have them strike if ivory poaching continues.
Bloggers often earn that same salary. There are exceptions, of course, those fortunate few who have become quasi-celebrities in their own right and found themselves, and their sites, snatched up by major media companies,' he goes on to say.
I had my website for ten years and I still haven't seen a salary yet. If I join the union, who's paying my salary? Where are these major media companies who want to buy my website?
It's the hackers thatt need a union, what with all the negative publicity they get when they do naughty stuff.
;)
The Hackers Guild could then provide *protection* to the Bloggers Guild - for a small fee, of course...
"He Who Dares Wins"
They're taking the piss surely?
OMG! The bloggers are on strike, oh noes!! Where will I get my random crap and aerated opinions from?!!!
It's almost as ridiculous as the 'Students Unions' we have in Universities here...
Then forget independence.
Unions had/have their place, but this isn't one of those places.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Unionize? To what purpose? Do you work? Nope.
Your pitiful little blog may get a pitiful amount of ad revenue. If you don't like what your free blog hosting service gives you, you are welcome to go elsewhere.
Servers, rackspace and bandwidth isn't free.
Set up your own hosting & blog software, and make a deal with Google or someone else to provide ads.
apterous.org
But how did they get ionized in the first place?
I really don't think there's much IP to protect. I mean, sure, that first blogger who actually summarized a news story and posted a link to it did something original, but in the intervening fifteen years I don't think a single blogger has been able to duplicate that feat--the second generation merely summarized the original blogger's summary and posted a link to his blog, the third generation did away with summaries and just quoted the most interesting bits from the second generation's summary while linking to second generation blog, and the fourth (current) generation has managed to dumb that down even further by slathering their blog with ads, limiting their summary quotes to no more than half a sentence (preferably a DISJOINT half sentence with ellipses in the middle), linking to the third generation blog, and maybe throwing in a wikipedia cite if they're intellectual.
The problem is that when other unions go on strike they're trying to make life more difficult, not less so.
Ubiquitously - A Ubiquity Developer Community
Most unions work because membership is mandatory for workers in a field covered by the union. Would this be the case for a bloggers union? If so, does the Internet suddenly become a read-only medium except for those who've paid their dues, and been approved for membership in the guild?
If I can be modded down for being a troll, can I be modded up for being an orc, or a balrog?
The short-term value of a bloggers union won't be about money and benefits -- the net will always have millions of nonunion bloggers to supplant the content of any union blogger strike.
Rather, the value will be in legitmizing blogging and creating a source for reputation. The Gizmondo-CES prank confirms some people's worst fears -- that bloggers are not professional journalists, may not be worthy of admission into press events (or may not enjoy to the same freedom of the press laws). A union that helps certify and regulate bloggers could boost professionalism and disavow/sanction childish misbehavior.
The challenge, though, is in making union blogs better, more readable, and more insightful than non-union blogs. Why would anyone join a blogger union (assuming that there are union dues) unless it means getting more pay, more respect, and more access? And why would a union accept a member, unless that member brings something to the table (other than dues, presumably). And why would readers pay more (or suffer more intrusive advertising) unless union blogs are better than non-union ones. All of those issues would be addressed if the union represents a professional organization with high standards for membership.
Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
Will this increase blogging related accidents? And can I sue the bloggers now?
'Number-memorizing Chinese people.'-Anon
Except when they get kicked outta the union for criticizing Israel, banks or women.
... they could just stop blogging if they are not getting paid for it and really want to be. Nobody would miss them, especially not those bloggers already making money. This self-important blabbering is great blog-content, but entirely uninteresting -- much like most blogs. What did your dog do today ?
Where, exactly would a group of bloggers create enough value that "we" would be prepared to pay extra to have them continue?
They have no leverage as most of them are hobbyists and do it more for their own benefit and self-image than for anyone else. If they stopped, they would not be missed and there would not be a hole in our lives that needed filling (possibly the reverse!!!)
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
You mean intertubes.
and black listed from unionized web sites.
Troll in deed.
Truth-if it'll set you free, then a lie will usually hold a person captivate (I guess the question is "why do you hate these people, they only crime was being born?"
Did anybody else read that as:
A Proposal for Unionizing Burglars ?
I was WTF?? all over the place!
You could always create a blog about how to harass bloggers thus forcing their hand and going on strike; however, you would then have to join the strike and may not be able to maintain the intensity of the harassment. Although this paradox appears unresolvable at first, but if you join me and my good friend Mr. J Hoffa behind the supermarket tomorrow night, I will let you know how to get around the problem.
When all else fails, try.
... no one gives a fuck if you go on strike. in fact i would propose that we help them form said union so that we can force them into a permanent strike so that all blogs dry up and my goggle searches can be useful again.
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
I go out of my way to say 'web journal', 'web blog', or even, 'web site' and I encourage people to do the same. I think that I'm doing my small part to end this stupid fad buzzword. But society seems to have an unlimited amount of new ones to annoy me with...
If you build it, nerds will come. Soylentnews.org
Unions are the cause of a lot problems in the U.S. In Illinois, you are required to join a union if your job function is unionized. They're huge bureaucratic entities that are corrupt, they waste time, and they especially waste money. I've been in a union (UFCW), and it sucked. Unions are always talking about striking while at the same time take a large chunk of money out one's paycheck. These "union dues" or extortion fees would never, ever be seen again. And the biggest problem with unions is that it is very difficult to get rid of a crappy worker.
I'll be damned if I have to be forced to join a union because I write blogs. Unions were needed at the beginning of the 20th century because there were no laws to protect the worker. Today, there are laws in force that do protect the worker. Additional laws for bloggers would not be that tough to do. Plus, there wouldn't be any extortion fees to pay.
"Happily lived Mankind in the peaceful Valley of Ignorance." -- Hendrik Willem Van Loon
Why does this topic remind me of a certain philosopher's strike?
I must admit he does spend a lot of time on his blog these days.
After he won "Best in Show" at the 2006 Mayflower Kennel Club Dog Show, his blog was serialized in Breeders Times and he just doesn't get time to go for regular walkies anymore.
"He Who Dares Wins"
I read it as "A proposal for unionizing BEGGERS !!" Right this is 21st bloggers matter more than beggers.
Life in this society being, at best, an utter bore and no aspect of society being at all relevant to women, there remains to civic-minded, responsible, thrill-seeking females only to overthrow the government, eliminate the money system, institute complete automation and destroy the male sex.
It is now technically feasible to reproduce without the aid of males (or, for that matter, females) and to produce only females. We must begin immediately to do so. Retaining the male has not even the dubious purpose of reproduction. The male is a biological accident: the Y (male) gene is an incomplete X (female) gene, that is, it has an incomplete set of chromosomes. In other words, the male is an incomplete female, a walking abortion, aborted at the gene stage. To be male is to be deficient, emotionally limited; maleness is a deficiency disease and males are emotional cripples.
The male is completely egocentric, trapped inside himself, incapable of empathizing or identifying with others, or love, friendship, affection of tenderness. He is a completely isolated unit, incapable of rapport with anyone. His responses are entirely visceral, not cerebral; his intelligence is a mere tool in the services of his drives and needs; he is incapable of mental passion, mental interaction; he can't relate to anything other than his own physical sensations. He is a half-dead, unresponsive lump, incapable of giving or receiving pleasure or happiness; consequently, he is at best an utter bore, an inoffensive blob, since only those capable of absorption in others can be charming. He is trapped in a twilight zone halfway between humans and apes, and is far worse off than the apes because, unlike the apes, he is capable of a large array of negative feelings -- hate, jealousy, contempt, disgust, guilt, shame, doubt -- and moreover, he is aware of what he is and what he isn't.
... and it falls in the forest ... does anybody care?
---- "Logoff! That cookie shit makes me nervous!" - A. Soprano
In 1980 the average CEO made about 42 times the amount of it's average (AVG) worker. Now it is about 300 times more.
Meanwhile, companies are moving jobs out of America and getting tax cuts to do it! American workers, the only non-unionized labor force in the modern western world, are non-coincidentally the only workers in the modern western world who are making less money, on average, than they were twenty years ago, due to inflation and taxes.
America's middle class is undoubtedly disappearing, but there are so many factors it's impossible to give exact reasons. However, I think the lack of corporate oversight, bloated war (not defense) spending, and fat, no-bid contracts, and a lack of strong unions are part of the reason. You basically have rich friends helping themselves get rich all over the top rungs of corporate America, and as everyone knows, trickle down economics is a figment of Karl Rove's imagination.
'web blog' is redundant, at least in part, since it's a portmanteau of 'web log'. On an unrelated note, 'blag' is also an alternative.
Okay. The article is poorly written, but the responses here seem to nonetheless be missing the point.
The article, in suggesting that bloggers organize to receive a cut of proceeds, is not talking about your next door neighbor and his diary-blog. The article is referring only to bloggers writing for websites that make considerable ad revenue.
I'm not all too familiar with the scene, but, according to the article, much of Daily Kos' and the Huffington Post's content is supplied by smalltime bloggers who write on those sites. The article is saying that those writers should be making a cut of the ad revenue. It then mentions a couple sites where that's already the case. And it ignores that the high-profile (read: already famous for some other reason) bloggers at the Huffington Post are certainly getting paid handsomely already.
Here's what I have to say to bloggers and WGA writers : stop whining or get a real job.
This may seem hypocritical as I am a blogger myself (just as a hobby / public disservice). What good could a blogger union possibly bring to the world ? What are they going to do, threaten Google with strikes ? Google doesn't give a flying fuck. They pay (or don't pay) their Adsense dues and that's the end of it. If you want more money, go back to your day job at Best Buy.
And how exactly do they plan on charging their dues ? Are they going to try and tax non-union bloggers too ? Are they going to kidnap and murder naysayers, then blame it on the Jewish community ?
Oh wait, did I offend a whole swath of lower humans there ? My bad. It's just that with any sufficiently large group of people with significant financial interests, corruption is inevitable. Bloggers are fine as they currently are, they already hold up together quite well through conventional networking. They don't need a formal union to smear its foul excrement all over the blogosphere.
-Billco, Fnarg.com
bloggers are ionized? i had no idea. lets hope this initiative will unionize them in safe and predictable fashion.
As much as I think the term "intellectual property" is silly, "a bloggers [sic] intellectual property" is far funnier.
sic transit gloria mundi
McDonalds, Walmart, Target, Lowes, The Bush Regime, Kane & Lynch, Eidos, Sony, etc.
Honestly, this unionizing idea is just plain stupid. How can you unionize a very loosely connected group of people? Most of these people barely even know eachother, much less interact. What is the benefit of unionizing beyond being able to use the union for pressure which can not currently be applied?
They could always go with a Blogging Guild similar to the Writer's Guild, another group of self-important windbags, but the point of this all is kind of moot. Blogging is about freedom. Post whatever the hell you want. If people like it they'll buy your products, click your ads, make comments or whatever else. You can't really expect readers to stick around purely on account of your seniority.
It's pretty sad when the Worst Idea of the Year is guaranted in mid-January.
the delivery time from Vega is too long.
You didn't go anywhere, you dropped right through.
FalconShould there be a Law?
I wasn't aware there was a problem of ionized bloggers...?
Now that's a group getting stepped on.
Run and catch, run and catch, the lamb is caught in the blackberry patch.
Bruce
Bruce Perens.
I can't wait till they try to turn this into a closed shop system like the WGA, where you'd have to belong to blog. And then the net returns to what seems to be its lowest entropy state: Google, MS and/or Yahoo being sued.
Yes. They could call themselves the 'North American Mainstream Bloggers Association' or 'NAMBLA'.
Sounds appropriate I think
I have nothing compelling to say
Bloggers often earn that same salary.
Yeah, unlike WGA members, bloggers earn exactly what they're worth.
Unions have already killed the car and steel industry as well as just about every other industry in America... so sure, let bloggers have their own union too... although who would they go on strike against? Here's an idea.... if you want a good paycheck, have a skill, don't rely on a union to save your untalented ass.
-Cnik
If one can figure out how to lock-out the union blogger. Harassment of the scabs might prove difficult... Denial of Scab Service Attack?
Slashdot Posting! Why don't I get paid for this?
Isaac Asimov once suggested that if one needed to determine whether a person claiming to be a scientist on To Tell the Truth was really a scientist or just an impostor, they could write 'unionize' on a piece of paper, hold it up, and ask the person to pronounce the word.
An impostor would probably say 'yoon-yun-ize' while a real scientist would more likely say 'un-ion-ize'.
When I read the headline, I was thinking of ions as well.
Well that's the trick, isn't it? Blogs are the new soap box, and there's no shortage of people preaching to anyone who will listen (although ironically this is usually just to other bloggers). Sure, most of them are elitist pricks whom, much like many politicians, believe that they serve some vital role in our lives and without which modern society would collapse in on itself like a dying star.
Like modern unions, this is a scam so that a few select people can wield power while deceiving everyone under them into thinking that they are necessary.
Unless someone is paying you to blog, blogging isn't a job. Shit, you certainly don't have to come home from your 9-5 job at Starbucks and blog about every fucking aspect of your life. Saying you want to be compensated for what you produce is like me asking the County to pay me for what I flush down the toilet. If you really do want to make a business out of it then charge for your content. I'm sure within a few, short days you'll realize how completely useless and trite the crap you spew out of your pie-hole is and exactly how little anyone really cares: 0.
I completely blame the media outlets for letting bloggers' egos get so ridiculously inflated to think that the trash they produce is somehow useful or important. People don't care what the 'blogosphere' is saying as they aren't a sample of any group but themselves. For fucks sake, if you want to write something meaningful, become a scientist and publish!
Another money-grubbing group wanting to milk anything creative for any possible dollar it may earn, while making use of and promoting imaginary property. What happened to unions being for the working class person getting stepped on by big business?
So let me get this straight: The "working class person" who is offered a job - to take or leave at his own choice - by the entrepreneur, the guy(s) who raised all the capital and took all the risk and created all the job for people too scared or unskilled or dim-witted to start their own businesses, then demands more money for less work through legal collusion (aka, a union), when big business is not allowed to collude (antitrust), it's the worker that is getting "stepped on." No, not the investor who laid down the money, it's the worker bee who thinks the world owes him a living.
But some internet writers eschew working for someone else and then whining about it, and instead go plant their own flag in the world to try to take care of themselves, they are the money grubbers. Got it.
This is how the libs think: They poo-poo on the very individualism and self-reliance that built America and which pays for all of their ridiculous welfare state programs, while championing the herd of worker bees who decided not to improve their skills or education or take the risk, all the while collectively bargaining them out of their jobs (see: airline industry, auto industry).
Slashdot "libertarians": Small government for me, big government for those I disagree with. -1, I disagree with you
Last I checked, Unions aren't free. You have to pay to join one because it costs money to run. Let's not even get into the lawyers' fees to protect this 'intellectual property' via the Union.
"If you make people think they're thinking, they'll love you; But if you really make them think, they'll hate you." - DM
For many people, the whole point of publishing on the Internet is to be free from regulatory interference and free from the structural costs of top down media. So please unionize and suffer the same marginalization by everyone else who does not care.
we talk about the illegal downloading of blogs from "The Pirate Bay" and how the Bloggers' Guild plans to respond.
*the one thing I will never want to download*
In the context of TFA, I think "column" is more appropriate. Blogs that appear on large websites, particularly news websites, are those that would usually be referred to as "columns" in newspapers or print in general, and those that write them "columnists".
"Blog" does have the advantage in that it is specific to the Internet - although it is also more general, referring also, as you say, to things like journals.
Bloggers generate "intellectual property" now?
There I was thinking that the year was speeding by, little did I know we had got to April 1st already!
I strikes me odd that bloggers would need the bargaining power and protections that unions offer.
What do bloggers offer back?
Most bloggers are simply untrained 'reporters' (in their own minds at least), simply parroting news from larger news services, or offering a simple aggregated feed.
Other bloggers simply blog about whatever they feel like, ie: "My Cat's breath smells like cat food", stuff I [or most people] could care less about.
Compensation? Compensation for doing what? Typing? Putting up a web page? Good luck.
Want compensation? Learn a trade, go to journalism school, get a degree, and report on something people actually care about.
Other than that, your blog is just a little insignificant portion of the web I might subscribe to [for free], or read about in some other obscure blog.
The real problem I see is that blogs don't have a real definition. A website that is "often" updated? Where everything is "mostly" done by the same person? None really works, and slashdotters know why: blogs are a social phenomenom, which describes the fact that people started to use homepages. "Blogs", if you ask me, are websites that call themselves blog, and follow a certain type of layout (see wikipedia's nondefinition). That's a real problem to give it any legal status; the same problem was encountered about giving bloggers the same protection as journalists (but the obvious solution, to protect everyone, actualy makes sense). As any mathematician will tell you, if you can't define it, it doesn't exist; good luck with making a union for it.
Don't take my posts literally; it's just code to control my botnet.
That was a typographical error. I wouldn't support the use of the word I'm denouncing. It should have read: "web log"
If you build it, nerds will come. Soylentnews.org
I'm sure I've heard dumber things, but I'm trying to think of any.
I love my sig.
My gut tells me this is nothing more than a way to draw in the more popular bloggers to a sort of pseudo-mainstream status. The media has long been searching for a way to contain blogging, podcasting, in short new media. This guy is a journalist. Probably a journalist first and therefore has more loyalties to mainstream media. Such is seen in his idea that there needs to be a way to separate those blogging for "fun" from those who essentially are popular:
Were bloggers to organize, a threshold would have to be established between blogging "for fun" and blogging in a way that should be considered "labor"--between amateurs and professionals, if you will.
The lure would be to protect bloggers from those who would tread on blogger's IP:
A bloggers guild could also, of course, work to protect bloggers' intellectual property and help ensure they're compensated for it. In 2001, the Supreme Court heard The New York Times Co. v. Tasini, in which six freelance writers took on publications that had run their work in print, paying them for the copyright, and then republished that work in online databases. In a 7-2 vote, the Court found in favor of the freelancers, ruling that writers should be compensated for work published online in addition to their print compensation. It takes only the tiniest of logical leaps to apply this ruling to the work of bloggers.
Creative Commons should do this for bloggers now!
This is just another way to gain some control over something they see as a) out of control and b) a threat!
God damn. I know that in this era and country there is this cultural phenomenon which consists in discrediting exports/professionals with respect to amateurs, but could we at least remember the difference between an amateur and a professional?
This whole 'blogger=journalist' movement is ridiculous and quite insulting to actual career journalists. I don't know how it's like in the US but here in France you need a license to call yourself a journalist (Disclaimer : my father was a French journalist), so if you want to be called that that's what you've gotta obtain. And don't get me started with the FUD some of you would like to give me about having the government/an organisation to decide who's a journalist, because here any journalist from the most Marxist to the most neo-fascist has their license.
You just got troll'd!
Rather than threatening to go on strike if they don't get paid, the Blogger's Guild could offer to go on strike if they do get paid. That seems far more likely to produce income as far as I can see.
The bloggers union just went on strike! Where am I going to get my daily source of blog for the day?!? Wait, I just found 1000 blogs that are still up. Nevermind...
-1 Infinite loop
I rent an apartment. It's far cheaper than a mortgage (literally "death grip"). I suppose I could have bought a house with a huge mortgage, but I go by that time-tested piece of advice from SNL: "Do not buy things you cannot afford".
I'm not saying people shouldn't be allowed to have mortgages. But when you get a huge loan, you have to realize that you may well be signing away your freedom to take a new job in the next 10 years. This is your problem -- not the government's, and not your employer's. If you truly have no other options, then if the company goes out of business in that time, you're *really* bad off. This seems like a rather risky proposition, regardless of whether you're in a union. If you're one step away from being in the shit, why are you taking out a big loan for a house?
And yet, both of these are just abstract groups. I really don't care if "employers" or "unions" get what they want; what matters is if the *people* who make up these groups get what they want. IME, unions are pretty lousy at delivering this, at least in the past couple decades.
It sounds like kind of a narrow ledge you have to walk. And you're depending on the *government* to keep it right in the middle, and make sure a group has just the right amount of power? Ha. No wonder they're so bad.
Unions sound like a good idea for 50 years ago, when tens of thousands of people worked in giant factories with abysmal safety records, and starting a business was something only Rockefellers did. I haven't seen anything good from a union in my lifetime, and have heard only horror stories from people who have had to join them.
The mole is worth talking about, mainly to allow moderators to hit us with an off topic fine.
According to Wikipedia, the mole is due to become extinct. The definition is depends on the gram, which in turn is based on a lump of metal the French have hidden in Paris. This is plain unscientific and I think the current plan is to define the mole as a particular number (preferably incorporating Paris Hilton's birth date to keep the French connection), and from that define a sphere of silicon that weighs a kilogram.
The difficult bit in all this is to get Paris (Hilton) to understand what a sphere is. Before long, someone says 'balls' and well, she has a brand image to uphold, doesn't she.
In the meantime, us chemists can happily use the mole as a unit of conversation. A nanomole is the smallest amount of fur that will glint in strong sunlight. And so on. The object is to drive away the boozy slobs and leave at least one interesting person to talk to. A difficult problem, but if you bungle it, you can always join the diminishing circle round the physicist explaining why 'vacuum cleaner' is an oxymoron. As a chemist, you can point out that an oxymoron is someone who destroys the ozone layer.
All these prefixes get messy. 'Atto-' at one billionth of a billionth is difficult to comprehend. But an 'attobuoy' is about the smallest thing that can float, and and is consequently the unit of measure for scum, when mentioning one to several scum. And the attomole is the musty smell in a molehole.
But my preference is for the guacamole. It uses a Mexican meaning of mole, and is made form avocado. Which is Spanish for lawyer, but derived form an Aztec (or thereabouts) word that means testicle. Amazingly, the word testify also refers to testicles. At which stage, you should have narrowed to conversation down to a monologue, or be talking to Paris Hilton (or similar).
There, off topic enough for you?
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
Neither are the various "union avoidance" firms that spend all the money in the world to remove a labor union(versus negotiating on a fair basis).
A starting point to look at.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
Collective bargaining usually requires a second party. Who exactly would this hypothetical bloggers union be negotiating with?
This is a more appropriate union name: United Blogger's Union.
... sit!
Sit UBU
Never heard of them?
;)
You must be new here.
The way to have better employment options for workers is to attract more people to switch from being employees to employers (i.e., start businesses) to increase competition for good workers. People like to point to Google as perhaps the most visible example of this effect, but keep in mind that some of the Google buildings where people are allowed to take their dogs to work previously housed another company that was famous for allowing people to take their dogs to work (Silicon Graphics), and competes with numerous other nearby companies that have been providing far better benefits to their quality employees than unionization has ever been able to sustain.
MAJIKTHISE: We'll go on strike!
VROOMFONDEL: That's right. You'll have a national philosopher's strike on your hands.
DEEP THOUGHT:Who will that inconvenience?
MAJIKTHISE: Never you mind who it'll inconvenience you box of black legging binary bits! It'll hurt, buster! It'll hurt!
"It is our blasphemy which has made us great, and will sustain us, and which the gods secretly admire in us." - Zelazny
Does this mean I'll be obligated to join & fork over 10% of income?
Anyone have a ha'penny?
SlashSig Karma: Excellent (mostly affected by moderatio
If it means bloggers will go on permanent strike, I'm all for it. :)
...because unions never did anything to cripple ford or gm
Stephen Fry posting on slashdot. Now that's quite interesting!
It's true I tell you, feller at work's next door neighbour read it in the paper.
Since there isn't a guideline for what a blogger does, they have no real way to organize. I am considered a blogger just for typing this idea. I do not understand why people keep trying to make free art regulated. Humans have been making free art since our beginning. Free art is not meant to have any organization beyond the constraints of the artist. It is probably the only known form of true anarchy. I feel that it is needed for a balance between it and mainstream. Unionizing bloggers is just plain silly. What if everybody with a personal diary had a union? This seems to show the fine line between a journalist and a blogger.
maybe it should be called BSAA
ya right you trust this please call me at 555-5555 and please have your credit card ready to pay your dues.
Shut up, moron.
So, if they strike, does that make those of us who keep blogging scabs? 'Cause I'm completely okay with that.
Stupid gits.
Moderate drunk! It's more fun that way!
bloggers were journalists. Why don't they join a journalists union. Doesn't forming a union go against the whole idea that the "blogosphere" is a maverick movement raging against the machine? It's just like John McCain suggesting he is some sort of maverick, when he is really just a lifetime senator that has done nothing but make the occasional principled vote when he knows it will have no effect on the outcome.
Sorry, but this is an attempt at lining the pockets of the union organizers. There is nothing that a modern-day union provides to it members. Unions are oppressive, big-brother organizations that prevent individual achievement. You are beholden to their word and are forced to join if you want to work in a field where they have control. They played an important role in protecting workers back in the day, but are now corrupt dinosaurs that provide no measurable benefit to it's members or society.
Bloggers are a bunch of blowhards who couldn't make it in the industry. The often cite no sources and frankly spread BS all over the internet with no accountability. Bloggers are the biggest propagandists of all. Personally, I'm tired of hearing people cite some blogger as a legitimate source of information without doing their own non-blogger research. To see this in it full glory, take a look at digg.com. It is the biggest example of a bunch of wanna-be bloggers spreading their feces-ridden content out to the masses, who willingly take in every putrid morsel, then pronounce how anti-establishment they are. They are just tools of tools.
blogger and intellectual should seldom be used in the same sentence
At first I read that as "un-ionizing" . . . and I kind of wondered what exactly that would involve.
Hmmm
No, the BEST idea ever, would be to unionize ANY & ALL computer workers... mainly, network techs, admins, engineers, AND coders. That MIGHT put a stop to outsourcing b.s. we're all putting up with in the U.S.A., as well as wage cuts and such.
So, let's imagine the bloggers form a union, and go on strike.
Somehow, I think I could manage.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
For nearly everything else they are way outdated and should go away. They exist mostly to bleed the workers to support themselves. They also live very well considering. I know of a union with personnel in the office that have IQs in the low double digits. Since I know they won't read this, they are retards. They collect money, pay themselves very well and do nothing. If something is done, it is done by the national part of the union, not the people there. It is a work fair project for stupid people.
The writers strike is a good example. Fuck them, they should get back to work or they should be replaced. They shouldn't collect 5 cents for every download forever. They are paid well. I wish I could get paid forever for code I wrote 25 years ago. Even stuff I wrote last week. They pay me and that is that. Amazing how people feel they should have entitlements forever. What next, is General Motors going to send me a bill because my 1994 vehicle has over 150,000 miles on it and has passed the expected service time?
Maybe we should send the writers bills for the crap they write. Look at TV lately? Send bills to the music industry for the trash they are putting out. I used to buy around 100 CDs a year. Last year I bought none. I didn't have a desire to buy one single CD. Even if I could have one for free from last year, I wouldn't know what to ask for. I hope 2008 is much better.
OK, calling a pooling-of-resources on the part of bloggers a union is probably not the right term.
I think what would be more appropriate would be something more like the AMA for doctors. A lobby group to pool resources to look out for their shared interests, what's wrong with that?
When bloggers get sued, or that guy in California where the feds wanted his video footage and held him on contempt of court to try to give up his sources, or when somebody gets fired because of what was on their blog, if there was an organization I could pay dues into and expect some help were I in a situation like that, I'd be for that kind of "Blogger's Association" or "blogger's guild"...
The plural form of "anecdote" is "anecdotes", not "evidence".