Via K.C. Jones and TechWeb News we discover that the wiki anoniblog offers blog tips anonymously.

Jones writes:

"A new collaborative Web site offers tips on blogging more anonymously for people who live in countries that restrict free speech -- or for those who want to write freely about their companies without the risk of getting fired.

The wiki, launched this week, is called anoniblog [the Anoniblogging Wiki]."

Read more here.

Steve Lohr in his November 6, 2005 article at the NY Times, "Just Googling It Is Striking Fear Into Companies" writes about the fact that even the largest retailer in the US, Wal-Mart, is wary of Google these days. Read the article to find out why.
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VoteLaw has a posting about a one-page order just issued by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit which has "declined to reconsider a decision requiring the FEC to write new rules to carry out a 2002 campaign finance law". Reference is made to a Boston Globe AP article of October 24, 2005 titled "Appeals court declines to review decision on campaign finance rules".

This is a development of utmost importance to blogging. What is the background?

The Bloglines Blog (see also WingedPig) has a posting about the fact that the FEC (Federal Election Commission) has been reviewing regulations concerning political speech on the Internet, including blogging.

The Committee on House Administration held a hearing on the topic on September 22, 2005.

The issues involved are found in this statement by Committee Chairman Robert W. Ney which we have excerpted:

"The Committee is meeting today to hear testimony on the subject of regulation of political speech and activity on the Internet....

The Bi-Partisan Campaign Reform Act (McCain-Feingold or BCRA) required the Federal Election Commission (FEC) to develop regulations to implement the Act. The Commission determined that Congress did not intend for BCRA to cover Internet communications and, therefore, adopted regulations that exempted them.

Congressman Shays and Meehan, believing the FEC regulations did not follow the intent of BCRA, sued the Commission. The Court [see material below] agreed with the Congressmen, and ordered the FEC to rewrite the rules.

As a result of this lawsuit and Court decision, the FEC was forced to rewrite the rules that cover communications on the Internet. That new rulemaking began in March 2005.

While this new rulemaking was going on, some Members of Congress were making clear that they did not intend for BCRA to cover the Internet, and that they did not want the FEC regulating these communications. In March, Congressman Conyers and 13 of his colleagues wrote to the FEC seeking an exemption for web logs or blogs....

Identical bills were also introduced in both bodies to preserve the exemption – in the Senate by Minority Leader Harry Reid and in the House by Jeb Hensarling (R-TX). Their bill language was adopted by this committee, and included in H.R. 1316, the Pence-Wynn bill, reported by the committee on June 8, 2005.

These bi-partisan congressional endorsements of the exemption show there still some issues on which both sides of the aisle can agree. We’ll later hear from two witnesses who operate blogs, one conservative and one liberal, who probably do not agree on anything except that they do not want the FEC to be regulating what they say or do on their websites.

The debate here then is not between Republicans and Democrats or liberals and conservatives. Instead, the debate here is between those who favor regulation and those who do not...."

The court decision in question was described at the hearing by Scott E. Thomas, Chairman, Federal Election Commission as follows [we quote footnote 1 at the linked source]:

"The U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia concluded that the Commission’s broad Internet exemption would “severely undermine [the Federal Election Campaign Act’s] purposes,” and would permit “rampant circumvention of the campaign finance laws and foster corruption or the appearance of corruption.” Shays v. FEC, 337 F. Supp. 2d 28, 70 (D.D.C. 2004), aff’d, 414 F.3d 76 (D.C. Cir. 2005), petition for rehearing en banc filed (Aug. 29, 2005). Though the district court held some 15 regulations invalid, it nonetheless indicated that pending resolution of the litigation and adoption of needed revisions by the FEC, the challenged regulations remain in effect. Shays v. FEC, 340 F. Supp. 2d 39, 54 (D.D.C. 2004)."

This is the court decision which the D.C. Appeals Court declined to reconsider.

Here are the issues:

Thomas points out in his testimony that the Internet should be regulated by the BCRA because the Internet is becoming a major player on the political scene.

Vice Chairman Michael E. Toner of the FEC testified that political speech on the internet should not be regulated and that the BCRA was never intended to apply to the internet.

Commissioner Ellen L. Weintraub of the FEC emphasized that "the focus of the FEC is campaign finance. We are not the speech police." Hence, Weintraub indicates that the proposed rules will in fact regulate the internet, but that substantial exemptions will be made.

Bradley A. Smith, Professor of Law at Capital University Law School, and former Chairman of the FEC, testified that the "the on-line community has reason to be concerned" and that "there is a sizeable and powerful lobby both in and out of Congress that clearly wants to regulate the internet....A regulated internet will strengthen those who already have political power and influence; a deregulated internet will boost the influence of ordinary Americans who just want to play by the rules...." Smith particularly points to the inherent conflicts created between internet regulation and press freedom, the resolution of which is a controversial matter. For the position of blogs, see The Volokh Conspiracy.

Lawrence Noble, Executive Director and General Counsel of the Center for Responsive Politics, testified that: "There is little doubt that the Internet can be used in much the same way television, radio and the print media have been before; as an avenue for the spending of large amounts of undisclosed soft money to finance various forms of political ads aimed at electing or defeating Federal candidates. "

Michael J. Krempasky of RedState.org provided testimony from one side of the political spectrum of blogging and Duncan Black of Eschaton provided testimony from the other side. Both stated that blogs should be exempted from the BCRA.

Some links to the history of this topic are:
CNet News.com
beSpacific
Volokh Conspiracy
pbaHQ
CDT
In the Agora
Michelle Malkin
Democracy Project
InstaPundit
Ask Jeeves Blog
Captain's Quarters
Bainbridge
Patterico
Newspaperindex

Given this court decision and barring Congressional action, there will now be much, much more about this matter on the blogosphere, you can be sure.

Technorati Tags:

internet law , political speech , campaign contributions , blogs , blogging , bloggers , freedom of speech , freedom of the press , FEC , Federal Election Commission , Campaign Finance Law , Campaign Reform Act , BCRA , legal , House Administration , Committee on House Administration , McCain-Feingold , Pence-Wynn , communications , Internet , Kaulin , web logs , campaign finance , online community , internet regulation .

Crossposted to LawPundit.
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This is a test to see how the new link feature at Blogger works Link to This Page at LawPundit.

Technorati has added a Blog Finder (beta) based on its tags directory. The HTML they use for that is different than for the normal tags previously used.
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The LIFT Text Transcoder makes it possible to convert web pages to text-only versions. The manual states:

"LIFT Text Transcoder (or transcoder) is a web application that converts a web page into its text-only version on-the-fly by eliminating all page layout that is present in the original page and by hiding many accessibility defects.
The transcoder is useful for the website visitor, since it removes some accessibility issues and small defects like missing image ALTs or forms that are not properly linearized or flash objects. It can be used also by the web developer to determine if the reading order of the information presented in the page makes sense when read in the order that would be followed by a screen reader or speech browser.

LIFT Text Transcoder (enter a URL at that page to try it out) is especially useful for people and situations where:

- graphics cannot be seen (e.g. blind persons, text-only browsers, ...);
- sizes of the page elements have to changed (e.g. a low-vision persons that maximizes the browser windows to enlarge its contents; a PDA user who has to fit everything on a small screen);
- size of text that has to be changed (e.g. a low-vision person; a presenter that has to project a web page to an audience via a projector);
-links and buttons have to be easily located and operated (e.g. a person with motor disabilities that cannot move his/her hand with precision, like somebody with a broken arm);
-form fields need to be easily layed out to be used (e.g. a low vision person using a screen magnifier that restricts his/her field of vision)."

The options that are available for each text-only page so produced are:

"Change the current font size: larger | default | smaller
Current color mode is Black on White, other available modes: Yellow on Black | Black on Cream
Show textual links as buttons
Do not move navbars
Open not handled documents directly
Hide the Text/Graphical View Panel
Hide Text Only Options
Open the original version of this page."

Cross-posted to LawPundit.
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Google has launched a blog search function at

Google Blog Search.

The same results in somewhat different format can be obtained at the Blogger Blog Search Beta, which is of course not limited to Blogger blogs.
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Chris Sherman reviews RSS Readers in Choosing an RSS Reader, a September 1, 2005 article at Search Engine Watch.
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The Oxford Business Group has an August 22, 2005 article entitled The New Blogocracy covering blogging in Malaysia.

An excerpt from that article states:

"The recent news that a group of five online diarists, or 'bloggers', participated in a 24-hour 'blogathon' to raise money for charity highlighted the important role these online journals now play in disseminating information to the Malaysian public."
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Danah Boyd, a former Googleite and Bloggerite now a Yahootite, blogging at zephoria ipseity, has the blog motto "apophenia :: making connections where none previously existed ". She studies "how people negotiate their presentation of self in mediated social contexts to an unknown audience" in media such as blogs. She is "fascinated by moments when people don't realize the bridge between the digital and the physical." Those out there who think that digital communication is not "real" human communication should read some of these posts. Great Stuff.
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Virginia Heffernan has a nice July 22, 2005 article at the New York Times on podcasting entitled The Podcast as a New Podium. Here is a sample paragraph:

"On "Catholic Insider" Father Vonhögen leads audio tours of Rome, which he often visits, and parses the Vatican's reaction to the new Harry Potter novel; he also boasts about how many subscribers he has, as all podcasters do. Recently he told a reporter: "On Sunday, in my church, I can reach about 500 people. But with my podcasts I can reach about 15,000 listeners or more.""
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The Blogger Dashboard update feature has finally been fixed, after months and months of being disabled. Bloggers can now once again tell from the Blogger Dashboard how many posts they have posted for each blog and when their last posting for each blog was made. It used to also be possible to see how many words a blogger had posted, but this feature appears to have been discarded for this newly fixed Dashboard version.

We spotted a new blogger blog at Blogger Buzz.