The Mike Abundo Effect

I never reveal confidential sources — and if this new bill passes, American bloggers won’t have to.

The House of Representatives has amended the Free Flow of Information Act of 2007 to include provisions to protect bloggers from being required to divulge their sources under certain situations in the same way as journalists. Instead of requiring journalists to be tied to a news organization, the bill now defines “journalism” to focus more on the function of the job: “the gathering, preparing, collecting, photographing, recording, writing, editing, reporting, or publishing of news or information that concerns local, national, or international events or other matters of public interest for dissemination to the public.”

Hope other democratic countries give blogger informants similar legal protection.

Let this be a warning to all copyright trolls: filing frivolous copyright claims carries legal consequences. That’s why the aptly-named copyright troll Michael Crook was forced to make this video apology in an out-of-court settlement with the blog 10 Zen Monkeys.

Who knew you can’t control your own image? Apparently, not this guy. Watch his crooked face and learn.

(Via 10 Zen Monkeys’ Creative Commons License.)