New Bill Protects Blogger Informants

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.

MySpace Buying Photobucket

No wonder MySpace blocked Photobucket. They were trying to lower the purchase price. MySpace is buying Photobucket for $250 million, down from the previous asking price of $300 million.

Damn. Just when Kickthebucket was getting all cool and Ajaxy and Flexy, their new bosses will be the ad-crazy n00b-breeding suits at Fox. Moral lesson: don’t do too much business in a walled garden. The gardeners will stab you in the back and turn you into fertilizer.

RIP Photobucket. After the ImageShack scandal, Flickr is set to take the lead in the photo-sharing race.