The Times: Tech column - Blog census/the Euro DMCA
By David Rowan
ACCORDING to the most authoritative census of such matters, there are now 878,940 weblogs, of which 580,100 are "active" - defined as having been updated within the last two months. Naturally, when you have more than half a million loquacious small-time publishers throwing words all over the ether, a specialist jargon will evolve to affirm the writers' "insider" status. If you've only just caught up with "bloggers" as people who keep weblogs, and think a "blog" refers to a blocked toilet, then it's time for a quick language lesson to keep you au courant.
First, that contracted word blog, which is extending itself in all sorts of directions. To refer to the entirety of weblogs, you can talk about the blogosphere, the blogiverse or, less commonly, blogistan - although the latter might refer specifically to the opinionated political weblogs known as warblogs.
The dominant figures in the blogosphere are known as the bloggerati, who provide links to each others' sites in lists known as blogrolls. The genre breaks down into stripblogs that include cartoons, blawgs dealing with aspects of the law, and microblogs that focus on a specialist niche such as, well, the business of publishing blogs (it's a self-referential place, the blogosphere). A kittyblog, you might like to note, used to mean one of those tedious journals dedicated to observations about the writer's cat, but the term has evolved to mean any pointlessly dull online diary. And if you lurk at other people's blogs but do not post comments, you are dismissed as a blurker.
The latest buzz among the blogerati concerns the moblog, the mobile weblog that can be updated via a wireless connection wherever its writer happens to be. As the new generation of camera-phones becomes more widespread, more and more mobloggers are uploading photos to their sites. Inevitably, these sites are being called photologs (or, more commonly, the more orthographically challenged fotologs).
Because Google counts weblog entries when its algorithms determine its search results, a new terminology has evolved among bloggers seeking to influence the process. So you can googlebomb a phrase, by encouraging other weblogs to link to a page using that phrase. You can also googlewash the search engine (think "brainwash") so that it redefines a particular phrase by getting enough weblogs to link to pages using that new definition.
Then there is fisking, named after the opinionated journalist Robert Fisk, a blogger's step-by-step demolition of another's contentious argument, originally one of Fisk's own but now in more widespread use. Google has already identified 19,800 web pages containing the term. Lexicographers, it's over to you.
++++
WHY should you care about the IP Enforcement Directive, yet another pile of paper from Brussels that seeks to regulate copyright, trademarks and patents far more rigorously than before?
Wake up. It's time you became aware of the plans to criminalise a wide range of activities.Your rights as a consumer are at stake. The directive, now under consultation, is Europe's very own Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) - the controversial American copyright law - but it appears to take an even tougher approach to digital rights management. Civil rights groups are warning that it could criminalise you for using ink cartridges not supplied by the printer manufacturer, or for disabling radio frequency identification (RFID) chips in the clothes that you buy. We'll return to the theme in future weeks, but you ought to read a devastating analysis on the Foundation for Information Policy Research website (www.fipr.org). Your freedom may depend on it.
(The Times, August 26 2003)
ACCORDING to the most authoritative census of such matters, there are now 878,940 weblogs, of which 580,100 are "active" - defined as having been updated within the last two months. Naturally, when you have more than half a million loquacious small-time publishers throwing words all over the ether, a specialist jargon will evolve to affirm the writers' "insider" status. If you've only just caught up with "bloggers" as people who keep weblogs, and think a "blog" refers to a blocked toilet, then it's time for a quick language lesson to keep you au courant.
First, that contracted word blog, which is extending itself in all sorts of directions. To refer to the entirety of weblogs, you can talk about the blogosphere, the blogiverse or, less commonly, blogistan - although the latter might refer specifically to the opinionated political weblogs known as warblogs.
The dominant figures in the blogosphere are known as the bloggerati, who provide links to each others' sites in lists known as blogrolls. The genre breaks down into stripblogs that include cartoons, blawgs dealing with aspects of the law, and microblogs that focus on a specialist niche such as, well, the business of publishing blogs (it's a self-referential place, the blogosphere). A kittyblog, you might like to note, used to mean one of those tedious journals dedicated to observations about the writer's cat, but the term has evolved to mean any pointlessly dull online diary. And if you lurk at other people's blogs but do not post comments, you are dismissed as a blurker.
The latest buzz among the blogerati concerns the moblog, the mobile weblog that can be updated via a wireless connection wherever its writer happens to be. As the new generation of camera-phones becomes more widespread, more and more mobloggers are uploading photos to their sites. Inevitably, these sites are being called photologs (or, more commonly, the more orthographically challenged fotologs).
Because Google counts weblog entries when its algorithms determine its search results, a new terminology has evolved among bloggers seeking to influence the process. So you can googlebomb a phrase, by encouraging other weblogs to link to a page using that phrase. You can also googlewash the search engine (think "brainwash") so that it redefines a particular phrase by getting enough weblogs to link to pages using that new definition.
Then there is fisking, named after the opinionated journalist Robert Fisk, a blogger's step-by-step demolition of another's contentious argument, originally one of Fisk's own but now in more widespread use. Google has already identified 19,800 web pages containing the term. Lexicographers, it's over to you.
++++
WHY should you care about the IP Enforcement Directive, yet another pile of paper from Brussels that seeks to regulate copyright, trademarks and patents far more rigorously than before?
Wake up. It's time you became aware of the plans to criminalise a wide range of activities.Your rights as a consumer are at stake. The directive, now under consultation, is Europe's very own Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) - the controversial American copyright law - but it appears to take an even tougher approach to digital rights management. Civil rights groups are warning that it could criminalise you for using ink cartridges not supplied by the printer manufacturer, or for disabling radio frequency identification (RFID) chips in the clothes that you buy. We'll return to the theme in future weeks, but you ought to read a devastating analysis on the Foundation for Information Policy Research website (www.fipr.org). Your freedom may depend on it.
(The Times, August 26 2003)
posted by David Rowan at Tuesday, August 26, 2003
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