The law and economics of blogging: Introduction

I'm presenting a workshop at the University of Illinois on March 29 on this topic. My original intent was simply to acquaint my colleagues with the technology and joys of blogging. But then the talk picked up sponsorship by the Illinois Program in Law and Economics, which led to the title, The Law and Economics of Blogging, and to the need to produce a talk to match.

In general, the following analysis attempts to develop a special niche for the study of blogging, building on blogging's special technical and economic aspects.

I am posting this on my blog in the form of what I call a “blog article.” I did something like this in my blog on how business is portrayed in film, which I have now folded into this blog.

I hope that blog readers will give me comments this week. I will then post the full revised paper prior to my talk.

Obviously this is all very rough and preliminary. In the spirit of the blog, I hope merely to start a conversation.

The following is the organization of the paper:

1. The technology of blogging.

2. The economics of blogging.

3. The law of blogging.

a. Are bloggers journalists?

b. Application of the election laws?

c. Copyright and fair use.

d. Media ownership restrictions.

e. Defamation law.

f. Licensing laws.

g. Vicarious liability.

h. Other business organization issues.

Comments

[mikal chase]

what is blogging?