While reading my own articles for correction via my RSS reader, I noticed that the extended posts weren’t displayed in the feed and no link hinted at the remaining content. I modified the RSS Syndication and Atom Templates to replace the original content, and I hope it’s not going to unleash an additional load to the servers:
Old:
New:
Richard Edelman, President and CEO of Edelman PR and co-author of their company’s blog Speak Up, wrote an interesting article about the recent movements in the news company OhmyNews in Korea.
The paper receives 200 stories a day from these volunteers. Much of the professional staff time is spent on editing and fact checking these stories before they are posted. In fact 70% of the stories submitted are accepted for publication. The citizen reporters must be verified through government registration numbers, and then sign onto a strict code of ethics including a promise not to write a story for personal financial gain and to tell the truth in each piece.
OhmyNews has embraced the philosophy that every citizen can be a reporter.
I suggest to read the full article as it appears to be a prototype for a new form of media awareness and the use of traditional media. Especially the Mainstream-Media (MSM) would like to learn from this role model which is nothing else but combining forces of professional journalists and their volunteering counterpart. But as these are still professional authors, it reflects nothing else but the current problems of the Blogosphere in which journalists fight bloggers and criticize them at all costs to protect themselves and the MSM. Perhaps the MSM needs to rethink more and more… and revise their processes to include this volunteer work of free authors and blog authors, too.
There’s an interesting compendium on Nico Lumma’s blog Lummaland where he describes his basic ideas on how to maintain a blog. I have the nerve to copy his work to translate it into english. I believe it’s quite a valuable resource especially for those who are at the beginning of blogging. The more you get to used to blogging, the easier it is for you to get comfortable with the usual netiquette.
1. A Weblog is no Forum neither Email.
– don’t use „Hello, it’s me again“ phrases to introduce each entry.
– don’t sign with „Best regards, XYZ“ or „Sincerely yours, XYZ“ as it appears obstrusive and strange.
– to order your entry with paragraphes aids in the reading process.
– some correctness of spelling and grammar should not be forgotten.2. Sources.
– sources are compulsory and/or to be linked.
– link to the exact source and not just the main domain „via cnn.com“ unless you link this reference to the exact URL.
– fancy users speak about the Permalink, the permanent habitat on the source’s server.3. Comments.
– the weblog is yours.
– if somebody is molesting in the comments, you may simply delete it or close the comments.
– you don’t have to acquiesce everything.
– a reply to comments is often appreciated.
– anonymous comments are simply uncool.4. Trackbacks.
– you inform the readers of another weblog-entry about other topic-related articles in other weblogs.
– choose trackbacks wisely and not „just so“.
– mutuality is important to trackbacking as you should refer within your article to the trackbacked entry.5. Images.
– many images are copyrighted, please validate their use.
– images should fit into the entire layout of the blog as 1024×768 for an image is way too large.
– keep PG-13 rating for your images or password protect the blog for special visitors.6. Music.
– don’t let the music start upon visiting your blog.
– links to MP3s which are copyrighted and are not royalty free should not be placed except if you like to consult your lawyer.7. Content and Topics.
– write whatever you like to write about.
However I believe that the deletition of comments is not always the right choice as it might result in a flame war between you (the deleting side) and the comment’s author (the flaming side). Sometimes a tough discussion requires value based argumentation, but spamming and a wordwar of insults is not acceptable. Over all, you’ll get better and better in time the more you use your blog.
I’ve got a few things to do this week concerning the Blogosphere and it’s virtual insanity, and this list shall provide me with some input for my brain.
1. Have a Skype-Call with Philippe concerning the translation of Blogspirit.
2. Have an E-Mail Conversation, Skype-Call or Phone-Call with Robert Basic for some ideas, must summarize first.
3. Summarize my ideas for „E-Awareness Management“ course at University.
4. Design a Blog on Blogspirit for my fellow lector Rafael Tito and instruct him on the use.
5. Finish the papers for Spanish 2 and Spanish 4, and the assignments Desarollo Regional 2
6. Visit a free appartment with my girlfriend for a possible rent-deal.
7. Read papers and assignments for Marketing 2.
8. Find sleep…
I’m just going to test if CNN is going to harvest my blog for adding corrective pagerank information or not. Apparently, they’re reported to spam several people who have placed CNN as topical statement into the recent entries or even linked to their site. Why would CNN do this? Just to increase the pagerank for their own site and decrease the pagerank of possible negative critics. I still like to watch their news reports on TV and read through their website, but if they’re going to do this… who knows what they’ll unleash?
By reading serveral of my RSS feeds, I noticed a frequent date error which occurs since last weekend on various blogs based on WordPress. I found this in the pubDate field within the RSS2 output:
Sat, 30 Apr 2005 20:56:55 +0000
and
Sun, 01 Mai 2005 11:53:22 +0000
and
Mon, 02 Mai 2005 23:57:23 +0000
So far, this datestring looks absolutely perfect, but you notice the variations between the abbreviations for the months? It’s a simple inconformity between the english and german abbreviations, since the dates originally are displayed in english, so I guess it’s some language update which might cause this error. I advise everybody to check their WordPress RSS2 php file for fixing this small bug – it usually puts your newest (german) entries below those with english date strings.
How much does the German Impressum, the legal disclaimer and copyright notice found on most german language based websites, actually validate within a foreign language environment? The German „Teledienstgesetz“ and „Mediendienst Staatsvertrag“ are meant to create this legal base for German websites. But what a German website is… this is the difficult question sometimes. One of my lectors asked me about four cases and I came up with the following conclusions – now if someone has more insight into this topic, feel free to comment.
Does German copyright apply to:
1) any website which can be viewed in Germany?
I believe this first case is impossible since german law cannot regulate international law and the law of other countries. If this would be the case, German law could forge some international TORT – or not?
2) any website in German, even if hosted elsewhere in the world?
If a US American citizen prefers to write in german because his ancestors lived in Germany or whichever reason this person has, how may the German government ever influence this decision of the author unless he/she is violating international law or his/her local law (i.e. US law). This sounds impossible for me, too.
3) any website made by a German citizen?
Since the TDG and MDStV are regulational laws for German citizens, this applies to all German citizens. Now here’s the catch! Where exactly does the website exist? On a server hosted in Germany or elsewhere in the world? In the first case, the German law applies. But for the second one, German law must find a backdoor in international law to contort the whole issue.
Am I liable under German law if I write my thoughts on a website in the USA or France as in a) server hosted, b) domain name registration (de, fr, us,…) and even worse c) if I use a foreign country’s dial-up account to post my critical thoughts on this particular website.
This here is an idea that makes the whole issue about the TDG and MDStV becoming useless: How will German law react if I write on a „de“ website which is hosted in France while I have a dual citizenship for Germany and the USA?
4) any website made in Germany, even if in English and intended for use elsewhere?
This is similiar to above I think, because I can design and maintain a website for anybody in the world. If I as German citizen have the most valuable business contact to a French company and decide to publish their material on a german language based website (i.e. www.french-german-connection.de), will I be the one who is held liable for distributing the material written for somebody else or is it the foreign company for which I only do the provision of service?
On the other hand, I believe the idea to publish english content as a German citizen or company is a question of authority. Just because your language differs from the national language, I am still bound to my national law – in this case the German law. Even if I am German and write in i.e. Sorbian or Frisian, it’s still a matter for German law.
In the end, the „Impressumspflicht“ is mainly a security mechanism for the parties involved to hold one person liable for any misues or copyright issues AND uphold regulations which apply in special cases. The „Impressum“ for an AG must include certain information which may not be included in an „Impressum“ for private persons (like myself), or Doctors or Lawyers must include special information just to make sure no other opponent will file a lawsuit against them.
Here’s some resource from the german Law-Blog on http://www.law-blog.de/archives/000103.html which refers to the „Teledienstgesetz“ and „Mediendienst Staatsvertrag“.
Die Regierung von Bahrain hat sich dazu entschlossen, dass die freischaffenden Blog-Autoren sich bis zum 02. November dieses Jahres bei staatlichen Organen registrieren müssen. Der publikgemachte Grund dafür ist der Schutz des geistigen Eigentums („…it is intended to protect people running websites, who in future will be able to protect their rights of authorship.“), jedoch kann soetwas als staatlich regulierte Kontrolle angesehen werden. Registrierung für Freie Rede? Die Reporter ohne Grenzen haben schon Zweifel daran geäußert, und sicherlich wird die EFF gleiches tun. Jedoch hört es sich schlimmer an als es ist da insbesondere Bahrain eines der wenigen Länder im arabischen Sprachraum ist, die freie Wahlen und Redefreiheit und fast völlige Gleichberechtigung bietet.
Man stelle sich aber jetzt einmal vor, dass in Deutschland die Pflicht zur Registrierung von Webseiten (und damit auch Blogs) gang und gebe sei. Viele Autoren würden weniger offenherzig publizieren wie bei „Die Akte Jamba“, und eine Zuordnung eines Autors zu seinem geistigen Eigentum würde alsbald auch hinter Pseudonymen verschleiert werden. Ich jedenfalls stehe zu meinem Namen… noch ;)
[via Blogherald]
One event I’d like to attend is the Les Blog in Paris tomorrow. Unfortunately, there’s been no money in the past and I had no choice but to stay at home. For all those who are interested, several of my daily reads will attend the event – and I wonder if the Blogspirit people will be there, too.
Per Zufall bin ich beim Freizeitblogger darauf gestoßen, dass Christoph Dibak für einen Blog-Eintrag abgemahnt wurde:
Wir weisen Sie darauf hin, dass wir neben den zivilrechtlichen Schritten außerdem durchaus erwägen, unabhängig hiervon strafrechtliche Schritte gegen Sie einzuleiten. Wir fordern Sie auf, sämtliche Äußerungen in der von Ihnen vorgenommenen Art und Weise zu unterlassen und unverzüglich die Seite:
Daher ist dieser Artikel erstmal wieder offline. Auch wenn ich denke, dass ich durchaus Recht hatte…
In dem Artikel, der immer noch in Suchmaschinen wie Google im Cache versteckt ist, hatte Christoph einen Vergleich zu einem Angebot des Suchmaschinen Eintrags-Service gemacht.
Indem er ein eigenes Gegenangebot (zur Registrierung von Webseiten in diesen Suchmaschinen) veröffentlichte, hat er erstens keine direkten negativen Äußerungen gegenüber dieses Anbieters getätigt und zweitens musste er sich von der Qualität der auf seinem Blog geschalteten Werbebanner überzeugen. Ich kann verstehen, dass Christoph aufgrund von rechtlichen Konsequenzen vorerst sich der Abmahnung gebeugt hat, jedoch muss ich die Frage stellen – ist Kritik an einem Unternehmen bei Anführung von z.B. Wucher und/oder Preistreiberei akzeptabel und frei von Abmahnung, um dem Verbraucher eine klare Warnung zu bieten? Wer kennt sich damit aus, wer hat damit gute oder schlechte Erfahrungen gemacht?
Update: Im Law-Blog gibt es dazu wissenswertes über Blogs, Meinungsfreiheit, Presserecht:
…Eine Abmahnung mit der Aufforderung zur Beseitigung der Texte und einer künftigen Unterlassung kann ein Unternehmen jederzeit stellen. Ob sie sich juristisch durchsetzen lässt, hängt davon ab, wie sorgfältig ein Blogger zuvor recherchiert hat, siehe oben.
Klaus Eck: Wie können Blogger darauf reagieren?
Arne Trautmann: Auf eine unberechtigte Abmahnung müssen Blogger eigentlich überhaupt nicht reagieren. Sinnvoll ist es jedoch, zumindest in einem Antwortschreiben darauf einzugehen, warum die Abmahnung unberechtigt ist.
Update: Ich habe den Namen des entsprechenden Anbieters gelöscht.
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