Over at the Becker-Posner blog, Posner says the idea of exempting blogging from the ethical or legal standards applicable to MSM “makes good economic sense.” He makes Hayekian arguments about self-correction in the blogosphere similar to those I make against regulating blogs in my Law and Economics of Blogging.
But I note here that there may be a case for a voluntary code of ethics. Posner says that “there is no way in which thousands or millions of bloggers could agree to adhere to a set of standards, whereas such (benign) collusion may be feasible in a highly concentrated media industry, such as the newspaper industry.” True, but voluntary standards could emerge spontaneously, tailored to different types of blogs.
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