Ridicule if you like...
but I actually HAVE read the report, and it oozes of technical ignorance, and a view on free speach that doesn't really belong in a western democracy.
Of course the report concerns itself with a lot of things, the blogs are by no means the main focus, but all the same it is important to defend the right to speak anonymously on the net.
There are a lot of people that for a number of perfectly sensible reasons do not want to write under their own name, but still are unreplacable sources of information, or can give unique insights on phenomenon seldom related anywhere else.
That could for example be people whose employers would mind them writing on sensitive subjects, people giving insights into very closed organisations, people with controversial intrests or with controversial political opinions.
Neither of this would exist if it wouldn't for the freedom of blogs.
The error that both the report and the article does is that they don't recognise the enormous inpact this freedom is having on society and political debate. Thanks to the blogs, politicians and the old media can no longer decide when an issue is not to be discussed any more.
Of course there is a lot of rubbish published as well, but people are getting used to actually thinking critically about what they read, and those who take any written word for truth are getting fewer. A blog gets it credibility over time, and bloggers are painfully aware of that, so they keep their act together.
A regulation like this would serve to take away the freedom of speech for a lot of people, by trying to convert the internet to traditional media.
Also the EU report is totally ignorant of the technical realities of the blog. Blogs dont follow the jurisdiction of nations, a blogger might sit in Brussels, writing his blog on blogspot in swedish. Who could force him to register? And what exactly is a blog? Any webpage? Or a webpage that calls itself a blog? Or a page with the word blog embedded in the url somewhere?
When I see comments like those in the article and in the comments, I am not surprised that the UK accepts having the most CCTV cameras per capita in Europe, you guys seem to have great confidence in the thought of the "always benevolent and good state" that protects its citizens by monitoring them and protecting then from all bad things.
Here in sweden there have been a "blog-quake" during the last few weeks against the wire tapping law. It created close to a political crisis for the government, and we have got a taste of a political power that we won't readily will let go of. Especially not by decrees from Brussels....
Biting the hand that feeds IT
