iBlog Presentations

We’ve uploaded all the iBlog speakers’ presentations at the iBlog site.  Except as otherwise indicated, the slides are in Adobe Acrobat format.

Blogging for Newbies Session: 

Abe Olandres (aka Yuga): Blogging 101 slides plus his shockwave movie showing how to register with blogger. To view the shockwave, download this and this into the same folder and run the regblogger.htm file.

Gail dela Cruz (aka Kutitots): Beautifying your Blog (a standalone Macromedia Flash presentation)

Afternoon Session

CICT Commr. Dondi Mapa:  Governance and Blogging: My Blogging Journey

Dean Alfar:  Blogging Creatively

PCIJ’s Alecks Pabico:  The Journalist as Blogger

Connie Veneracion (aka The Sassy Lawyer):  How to Build a Bookmark-Worthy Blog

Note:  We’re in the process of making MP3’s of the above sessions which were recorded.  We also took about 5 hours of video which will also be posted. If anyone out there can help or teach us how to podcast or efficiently place this content on-line, please give us a shout-out.  Thanks!

Singaporean Agency Cracks the Whip on a Blogger

In a Yahoo!News report, a Singaporean student at the University of Illinois took down his blog, Caustic Soda, after a government agency threatened him with a lawsuit for his entries critical of the agency’s policies. 

Under the Philippine Constitution’s Bill of Rights, the State is required to protect a citizen’s Freedom of Expression.  So, I would be surprised if the Philippine government would ever go through the same lengths as its Singaporean counterpart in quelling dissent.

But I recall that many of the Singaporean students I met abroad were studying under one government scholarship or another.  So the leverage of the Singaporean government is much greater — shut up or be without funding.  Consider further that a large percentage of Singaporeans live on government-provided or subsidized housing.  On te bright side, the Singaporean government is universally credited with the country’s phenomenal economic growth and performance.  So, I’ve heard some Singaporeans say that if basic freedoms have to be chilled, then it’s a fair exchange.

Now, I wonder if that attitude will ever get some traction over here.

Linking May Constitute Copyright Infringement but Only in Extreme Cases

At iBlog, La Vida Lawyer asked a question about the legality of deep linking.  As I mentioned, the general rule is set out in the Tickets.Com case which says that deep linkingdoes not constitue copyright infringment.  The judge said:

Further, hyperlinking does not itself involve a violation of the Copyright Act (whatever it may do for other claims) since no copying is involved. The customer is automatically transferred to the particular genuine web page of the original author. There is no deception in what is happening. This is analogous to using a library’s card index to get reference to particular items, albeit faster and more efficiently.

Some still believe, however, that there may be legal problems associated with deep-linking but I’m pretty confident that the general rule will prevail even though exceptions may crop up.  Law professors love for these exceptions and make it a point to ask them in exams.  (Sorry, it’s what we live for!) (more…)

Someone from the Berkman Center Noticed

Rebecca MacKinnon, a fellow at Harvard Law School’s Berkman Center for Internet and Society, took note of iBlog in the center’s Global Voices Online blog.  Someone from there was nice enough to leave a comment in the iBlog site.  Thanks!

To learn more about Global Voices, read their Manifesto and visit their Wiki. (What’s a wiki?)

Cyberlaw 101?

Well I thought of the category name on the fly.  During iBlog, Dean told me to write more about intellectual property.  Okay, I’ll do that.  But then it occured to me that maybe it would be better to write about some other basic stuff concerning Cyberlaw or IT law.  This space is inspired by The Legal Theory Blog’s Legal Theory Lexicon although mine won’t be as well written.

Actually, CyberLaw is so retro.  It’s a term that was in vogue in the late 90’s and early ’00’s.  In Internet time, that was a lifetime ago.  So, I guess it’s now called IT law or maybe it shouldn’t be called anything at all (right Judge Easterbrook?).