Leveson Policy Needs to be Reviewed for Bloggers

As Chairman of Enquiry of the ongoing investigation into the practices, culture and ethics of the press, Lord Leveson wants to regulate the print media. He has suggested that judges should have the power to award full costs and ‘exemplary damages’ against any unregulated publishers.

Having worked in publishing in the past, for the DMGT and Associated Press for 7 years, I’ve been keeping a casual eye on this. What he's proposing are fairly strict measures, and the press need them (not Associated I must add, to my knowledge) but this policy is steeped in ambiguity. It's very possible Lord L only ever saw this new legislation applying to the large and unwieldy print publishers and not to websites (unless they belonged to these publishers), but that’s not something that’s made it into the small print.

incredible naivety

What I’m seeing now, in the current proposal before the House of Lords on Monday, is that these regulations apply to any size of publishers and are going to apply to all UK websites. This is totally bonkers. They also appear to apply to anyone who generates content for (and publishes) a blog. This could have extreme repercussions, with ordinary blog publishes and small businesses potentially falling foul of crippling regulation and forcing many to stop the publishing that is an essential part of their SEO, community support, and content marketing. If there's more than one author of the blog, it looks like they'll also be forced to join a 'self regulator'. You can see a list of the current rulings, and their wording, here.

It seems to me that this policy needs to be seriously reviewed. There's serious lack of clarity in the current proposal, and wording and delivery like this is frankly naive in relation to the developing digital landscape of UK business.

As stand alone entities, websites where never a part of the phone hacking scandal. They shouldn't be required to be crow-barred into self-regulation in this way. It’s frankly crazy, and this needs to be reviewed before going before the House of Lords on Monday.

If you feel as I do, please take a look at the facts and consider adding your signature to the Open Rights Group campaign on this matter.

Every signature helps, and even if it doesn't it'll make us feel like we tried.

Regarding Blogging...

...oh yeah, I remember now, I have a blog.

Pity it demands more than a daily witticism in 140 characters or a link or two. I wonder if it's writers block, apathy, or just evolution that's keeping me away? It seems like everything I'd want to post here can be summed up in a update on Facebook or a pic sent to Twitpics. I've never been a journalist at heart.

It's not like nothing interesting is going on.

Work with Conversify is still going strong, and the world of social media is throwing up fresh challenges for us daily. Meeting toy soldiers, coffee pirates and costume geeks at Steampunk convivials and Regency dances, and a plethora of real-world social events are keeping our weekends occupied as they invariably are at this time in the season.

The pets are still foolish and a money-pit of calamity. There's new apps to play with, and a fresh crop of TV to watch ranging from Dexter to Supernatural. SL ticks on, with the sim fully rented and the role-play moving forward (as time allows) and with the new copy write rules looming ever nearer (and me with a tonne of rebranding to do on over 200 textures). Aliza and I are still doing the Yank & Limey podcasts, as time and travel allows.

Somehow though, none of it seems worth blogging about. A little voice at the back of my head keeps telling me I should concentrate on doing rather than pontificating. Surely I'd just be repeating what I'm saying on other channels? Is it too trite to say "blogging feels so 2004"?

So, for want of this thing dying, I'll be using it as a hub for a bit. Posting pics, videos, and quick comments. Intermittently, obviously. Please bear with things until I can just turn this into my Friendfeed or something ;-)