links for 2009-06-17

In the 'Also in Crime News section': "Ruling on NightJack author Richard Horton kills blogger anonymity"

From the comments: "Seeing as The Times is so keen on naming bloggers - will we see BabyBarista named?" and "The cases could only be identified because of the un-professional conduct of the journalist who revealed the author's identity."

"The real danger of Night Jack's exposure, beyond the consequences for him personally, is that it will produce a chill factor. Important stories about official or commercial incompetence, bad practice - even illegality - will go untold because insiders will no longer feel safe to blog anonymously. Whistleblowers will stand to be named and shamed - and possibly dismissed. There is a definite public interest in having an insider's perspective on the inner workings of public services. Such blogs, indeed, have in recent years become a valuable hunting-ground for newspaper reporters in search of a good story. It would be ironic if The Times's scoop today deprives them of many more such in the future."

"While The Times focused on the letter of the law that was being broken, the broader public interest of letting public servants voice their [frustrations] has been ignored. It is difficult enough to get soldiers to blog, to get a genuine feel for the experiences of NHS workers, civil servants and teachers. And it just got harder."

"Why would anyone implement this? It seems like a lot of work. You can tag content now using methods like anchor text and well, tags, such as those available through most blogging platforms and bookmarking sites like Delicious. If content management systems and other content creation platforms such as blogging systems incorporate this structure (for instance, by automatically using the tags labeling a blog post), we might see some adoption, but this wouldn’t eliminate the issue of multiple tags for one concept."

"How? How will you do that when, if you tell BT to not let me go on piratebay, I'll just go out and buy a pay-as-you-go dongle from 3 instead? Does anyone really believe this sort of thing even makes any coherent sense? Or are the government merely responding to letters from the BPI and chums in the way an uncle might indulge a child by awkwardly playing fairy tea-parties with them? The numbers at the back of the report reckon that the costs of the measures will be £35million to set-up, with up to £50million a year; the benefits are estimated at £200m annually. If those figures are correct, then why not invite the rights holders - who will benefit - to pay the costs of the ISPs, who will be paying out? Rights holders would surely be quids in - unless their claims of how much they're losing, and could expect to claw back, are just fantastic."