Road Conditions

The Instapundit sees hope in this movement in India.

I, on the other hand (to paraphrase Haley Joel Osment in The Sixth Sense), "see [lawsuits]. They're everywhere." Waving a red flag in front of a bull is pretty damned stupid if you don't have a clearly accessible escape route planned in advance. The Times has already proven that they can shut down a blogger quickly and effectively by making it too expensive to defend against a lawsuit. They're bigger, and they've got enough resources to file lots of lawsuits.

Patrick also sees prosecution on the horizon in the case of the FEC, and says, in effect, "Bring it on, baby."

Who's going to pay for defending such cases as they arise? I'd sure like to know. Because, sure as shooting, they are coming.

Once bloggers became a highly visible, very pesky, worldwide community, we became a threat to the MSM, to big business, and to big government. We must be ahead of the curve on protecting our interests and our freedoms. I'm still voting for some kind of legal/legislative fund to do that. We should be identifiable as a group. We should be lobbying our legislators. We should be supporting each other when the lawsuits come -- and believe me, they're coming. The RIAA had wonderful success in stemming the downloading tide. Apple just smacked First Amendment rights upside the head with a theft of trade secrets claim. What can be horribly costly to an individual blogger is a drop in the bucket to MSM, big business and big government. Do you think the big guns haven't noticed?

I see lawsuits. They're everywhere.
_____