Should I be reassured?

EU Referendum has posted an interesting piece that addresses some of my worries I expressed in this piece:

'There has been a certain amount of concern as to whether bloggers might be caught by the proposed press regulations, and thus be exposed to crippling fines. However, in the debate last night in the Commons, the position was made clear by culture secretary Maria Miller.

A clause inserted into the coming Bill makes the law apply only to a "relevant publisher". Such a publisher would have to be publishing news-related material in the course of a business, the material would have to be written by a range of authors and it would have to be subject to editorial control.

These tests, says Miller, "would exclude a one-man band or a single blogger". The clause added is "specifically designed to protect small-scale bloggers", she said. Lone bloggers clearly do not meet the criteria necessary to include them in the regulatory maw.

However, online news sites such as Huffington Post, may well be caught in the net. Thus, if anything, this new law will have the effect of levelling the playing field between the clogs and the independent bloggers.'

I will wait to see if such a clause is inserted but I won't be allowing myself a celebratory drink just yet.


Thanks to Ronnie B for pointing me in the direction of the EU Referendum article.

Whilst I am saying thank you, I must also thank the two commenters who said such nice things following my rather depressed post:

Davieboy said...

Much as I admire you and would be desperately sorry to lose your blog, I cannot blame you. The bastards are making themselves unaccountable. A very, very dark day.
Thanks for all you've achieved to date - I'm sure it's been a pretty thankless task but many of us value it tremendously.

Anonymous said...

I can only agree with Davieboy. Thanks for your tireless work in upholding what is good and exposing what is evil.