Law X.0

Tips For Writing a Successful Legal Blog

Wayne Scheiss, director of legal writing at the University of Texas School of Law, has an excellent article on Law.com that offers seven tips to make your blog successful.  [RJ]

Voting Underway for the 2008 ABA Journal Blawg 100

The editors of the ABA Journal have selected 100 law blogs for the Journal's second annual blog award contest. Voting in ten categories ends Jan. 2, 2009. Yes, it is a popularity contest but this one has the backing of the ABA Journal.

Congratulations to the five blogs in our Law Professor Blogs Network that were nominated this year.

Crime: Sentencing Law and Policy

Professors: Law School Innovation and TaxProf Blog

Niche: Brian Leiter’s Law School Reports and Legal Profession Blog

Kudos also to Slaw for being nominated in the Technologycategory and J. Craig Williams and Robert Ambrogi for their Lawyer2Lawyer being nominated in the Podcast category.

For more, see the ABA Journal's December 2008 cover story, The Blawg 100.[JH]

Blogging v. BBS in China

Blogs killed bulletin boards in the US but not so in China. According to The Next Web's Ernst-Jan Pfauth BBS are flouishing because they are anonymous and BBS contributors get more comments on boards than on blogs. Check out Blogging? Chinese Internet users prefer bulletin boards for more information. [JH]

Top 50 Homeland Security Blogs

e-Justice identifies 50 excellent blogs representing the government, researchers, professionals in the field, and every-day citizens and their offerings on the ever-evolving and important topic of homeland security. Among the blogs listed is the Law Professor Blogs Network's ImmigrationProf Blog. [JH]

Technorati’s State of the Blogosphere 2008 Report

Check out Technorati’s five-part State of the Blogosphere 2008 Report:

• Who Are the Bloggers?
• The What And Why of Blogging
• The How of Blogging
• Blogging For Profit
• Brands Enter The Blogosphere

[JH]

Media Bloggers Association Offers Bloggers Liability Insurance

The Media Bloggers Association has launched a comprehensive program to provide bloggers access to the same sort of legal and financial resources long available to traditional media organizations including BlogInsure, a first of its kind liability insurance program for bloggers which provides coverage for all forms of defamation, invasion of privacy and copyright infringement or similar allegations arising out of blogging activities. Check out MBA'a press release for details. [JH]

Time for British Lawyers to Stake Their Claim in the Law Blogosphere

Isn’t it time that UK law firms staked their claim in the blogosphere? That's what Alex Wade asks in his Times Online story (includes a list of best UK law blogs. Hat tip to Legal Blog Watch. [JH]

The Naked Conversation

Some thoughts on blogging as a viable publishing platform by UK blogger Nick Holmes on Binary Law.

Google Locks Up Legitimate Blogger Blogs After Misidentifying Them as Splogs

Juan Carlos Perez reports in Google Mislabels Blogger Sites as Splogs, Locks Them, that Google mistakenly flagged a number of legitimate Blogger sites in an attempt to rid its Blogger service from spam blogs, or splogs last week, prompting the company to scramble to unlock them. "Google's actions to clean up the Blogger platform no doubt respond to its broad misuse by scammers and malicious hackers to link to or distribute malware."

StopBadware.org's May 2008 Badware Websites Report, identified the 10 network blocks that contain the largest number of malware sites. Scammers' exploit of Blogger made Google the fifth-largest malware-infected network in the world in May, and the largest US network. More about the Blogger platform being used by scammers and malicious hackers to link to or distribute malware at Are You Using Blogger?

AOL Blogs Shutting Down

TechCrunch's Michael Arrington is reporting that AOL is making across the board budget cuts on its blogging properties, but one area that seems to be immune from the cuts is the Company's Tech Network (Engadget, Switched, TUAW: The Unofficial Apple Weblog, and Download Squad), which continues to generate substantial revenue. The future of many bloggers whose sole source of income comes from writing for AOL blogs appears to be uncertain.

Arrington is also reporting that AOL is "sunsetting" the photo sharing site AOL Pictures, multimedia slideshow service Bluestring, and online storage service Xdrive. [JH]

Are You Using Blogger?

Security research firm Sophos has released its cybercrime report for the first half of 2008 [download here, free registration required]. One finding is pretty scary. According to the report, Google's Blogger is a substantial distributer of malware today because (1) Google's dated code allows free and anonymous creation of a site hosting malicious code and (2) the commenting system can be spammed with links to infected sites. Because of its relative ease of "infection", Sophos says that nearly 2 percent of all malware is hosted by Google, amounting to roughly 400 new instances a day. Hat tip to BetaNews.

You get what you pay for ... so if you are using Blogger, it might be time to consider switching to a subscription-based service. My recommendation is TypePad, which hosts this blog. Six Apart has a very reasonable tiered pricing structure. [JH]

AP's New Excerpt for Web Use Fee Schedule

A meeting between the AP's Vice President for Strategic Planning Jim Kennedy and Robert Cox, who heads the Media Bloggers Association, is planned for Thursday. The subject at hand is the AP's attempt to find a new way of sharing AP content, which now involves a fee per excerpt based on its word length. BetaNews reporter Tim Conneally has the details: AP sets up a toll booth for bloggers citing its stories.

The AP's quotation fee system is powered by iCopyright. As noted in our earlier post, iCopyright's Terms of Use Agreement stipulates that the license purchaser not criticize either the publisher or the author of the article being quoted! [JH]

Was Google Fiddling Around With Anti-Obama Blogger Sites?

Was Google playing games with its Blogger service to silence critics of Barack Obama? I doubt it but that was the question buzzing in the blogosphere after several anti-Obama bloggers were unable to update their Blogger-hosted sites. Read the complete International Herald Tribune story by Miguel Helft: Bloggers take aim at Google. [JH]

Associated Press vs. Bloggers

Check out Mehan Jayasuriya's post on Public Knowledge, Associated Press Declares War on Bloggers, Fair Use. In it he calls attention to the fact that under the Terms of Use Agreement you may not criticize either the AP or the author of the article in your post or article after you have purchased a license to quote AP content. See also: Citizen Media Law Project's coverage of the AP-copyright controversy. [JH]

Lawmakers' Blogs Share Views, Insights

Interesting article from Stateline.org:

Alabama state Rep. Mike Ball (R) posts “this day in state history” tidbits on his blog, Idaho state Rep. Nicole LeFavour (D) offers behind-the-scenes insight on hers, and Nevada state Sen. Bob Beers (R), running for re-election, posted this limerick: “Beers’ opponent’s positions defy/Common sense, so she’ll have to rely/On attacking the man,/Researched “dirt” is her plan,/And when none can be found, she will lie.”

There are 175,000 new blogs launched every day across cyberspace, according to web observer Technorati, and state legislators’ offerings are sprinkled among them. More than 50 lawmakers regularly blog, and more are joining the blogosphere every year.

Click here for a list of state lawmakers' blogs

Like many bloggers, state lawmakers give their opinions on the topics of the day and share their personal life with readers. But unlike other bloggers, they also sometimes give the public a unique view into the workings of the statehouse."

[RJ]

Law Gossip Blogs a PR Mess for Law Firms

Leigh Jones, staff reporter for the National Law Journal, reports that "many of the nation's most renowned law firms have felt the public relations wallop delivered by law gossip blogs, those online tabloids that can turn an interoffice memo into a virtual billboard of bad news for partners or associates." Read more about it in Gossip Blogs Dedevil Law Firms. [JH]

Women and Social Media Demographics

The BlogHer/Compass Partners 2008 Social Media Study (pdf) provides demographics about women and social media. From the study:

• 36.2 Million women participate in the blogosphere weekly
• 15.1 Million women are publishing at least one post weekly
• 21.1 Million women are reading and/or posting comments to blogs weekly

Hat tip to beSpacific. [JH]

About 25% of Am Law 200 Firms Blog

LexBlog reports that as of mid-March, 53 Am Law 200 firms were blogging in some manner. Read more about BigLaw blogging at Cutting a Winning Edge in Law Firm Blogs (American Lawyer, May 2, 2008). Hat tip to Mitch Rubinstein, Adjunct Law Prof Blog. [JH]

The World's 50 Most Powerful Blogs

According to The Guardian. [JH]

New Edition of Handbook for Bloggers and Cyber-Dissidents Now Available

Reporters Without Borders has published a new edition of its Handbook for Bloggers and Cyber-Dissidents (pdf). It offers practical advice and techniques on how to start up a blog, how to blog for anonymously and how to circumvent censorship.

Here's the Table of Contents

1. BLOGGERS, A NEW SOURCE OF NEWS by Clothilde Le Coz
2. WHAT’S A BLOG ? by LeMondedublog.com
3. THE LANGUAGE OF BLOGGING by LeMondedublog.com
4. CHOOSING THE BEST TOOL by Cyril Fiévet, Marc-Olivier Peyer and LeMondedublog.com
5. HOW TO SET UP AND RUN A BLOG by The Wordpress System
6. WHAT ETHICS SHOULD BLOGUEURS HAVE? by Dan Gillmor
7. GETTING YOUR BLOG PICKED UP BY SEARCH-ENGINES by Olivier Andrieu
8. WHAT REALLY MAKES A BLOG SHINE? by Mark Glaser
9. PERSONAL ACCOUNTS
   • SWITZERLAND by Picidae
   • EGYPT: “When the line between journalist and activist disappears” by Wael Abbas
   • THAILAND : “The Web was not designed for bloggers” by Jotman
10. HOW TO BLOG ANONYMOUSLY WITH WORDPRESS AND TOR by Ethan Zuckerman
11. TECHNICAL WAYS TO GET ROUND CENSORSHIP by Nart Villeneuve
12. ENSURING YOUR E-MAIL IS TRULY PRIVATE by Ludovic Pierrat
13. THE 2008 GOLDEN SCISSORS OF CYBER-CENSORSHIP by Clothilde Le Coz

[JH]