broadcast rights and Blogs
The world is still struggling with the concept of the Internet. Blogging alone is set to threaten mainstream media by upsetting the balance of broadcast rights and copyright. The International Olympic Committee has barred competitors, coaches, and others from writing firsthand accounts for personal Web sites. At issue is the fear that mainstream medias coverage, which they pay a great deal of money for, cannot compete with an Athletes personal blog about their day-to-day experiences. The ability of a single person to write events of their day for the world to see is testing our ideas about free speech, copyright, and broadcast rights.
One thing to keep in mind as Americans, free speech is not a universal right and that right does not travel with us. There are places where the free commerce of ideas that we enjoy is not a universal right. Therefore, the Olympic Committee is well within its rights to bar participants from speaking to the world. The problem is that how do you enforce this idea in a world of instant access to everyone. The Internet by design has made free speech available to the world.
Now here at HeyDan, the Olympic Committee is not worried about my readers turning off their TV’s and just reading the news from me. I enjoy a freedom that comes with the fact I get less then 50 hits a day and most of them are people I know. Imagine if the world watched your site and CNN covered it when you posted or even when you did not. It would change things.
Our morality is struggling to keep up with our technologies. The world will be a place where free speech and free access are truths guaranteed by technology. Unless we want to put the genie back in the lamp, we have to rethink how we deal with many many things. Blogs will change the world.