Hilary Rosen

Rogers Cadenhead, founder and publisher of The Drudge Retort, has been Cease and Desisted by AP News for publishing fragments of their syndicated news articles and reports.

Yes, fragments, not the whole articles. Go to Rogers' site to read the reasons given by AP.

Adding a quote to a blog post is very much like the sampling of a hook or a beat on a song. It's why so many people were opposed to the Digital Millenium Copyright Act. It's not only that albums like Beck's Odelay or Public Enemy's Fear Of A Black Planet would never had happened. Documentaries, archival works, opinion or scholarly writing would be all but non-existent if it means that now journalists, bloggers, historians and scholars would need to pay publishing houses for every single quote and/or sample they need for their work.

Hilary Rosen became persona non-grata in this technologist's household for her years at the RIAA. She almost single-handedly killed creative freedom of expression thanks to the war she waged against the fair use of copyrighted materials. We really don't like her legacy at all.

So when I heard the former lobbyist had joined the Hillary Clinton campaign, I wasn't shocked. It made perfect sense. The lobbyist and the lobbyist loving politician. WTF.

Yet, grock how the woman grated the crap out of me every time I'd see her on CNN vigorously defending Hillary Clinton's shenanigans on the campaign trail. Last night though, she had a quick appearance during the election coverage and I noticed something different.

People were discussing Hillary Clinton's non-concession speech and you could see that Rosen was really more than pissed, she was truly disappointed. So when I read her post on Wednesday's Huffington Post, I wasn't just blown away for how candid it was. I really got that it was heartfelt and sincere :

Image courtesy of Jossip

I was invited to attend the Reuters' Newmaker Event : Public figures, Private Lives.

The focus was actually on celebrities, paparazzi and the rise new media upstarts like Perez Hilton, Jossrip or the indy image agency Splash News. You all know who Perez and Jossip are. SplashNews, though, is the little company that could --they were the ones who snagged the rights to the "drunken stepfather" photographs of Mel Gibson; the ones taken minutes before his DWI arrest and anti-semitic ranting.

David has an excellent recap over at Jossip. He tells of how Bonnie Fuller polygraphs sources on some of their scoops. Crazy! Given that she is the biggest purveyor of gossip-as-cracktainment, this bit of news proves Bonnie Fuller is the Donna of the biggest gossip mafia in the world.

That's so hot!

This being Reuters though, the conversation when from gossip to politics thanks to Mark Foley. And of course, it was used as a moment to bitch-slap "the blogs".

Sigh.

A year ago I debated with Paul Holmes, the chief editor of Reuters global news division, about myths rurrounding blogs. A year has passed, much has happened since, and he's totally hit to blogging. But somehow these panels end up into blogsmears and now the shift is from "bloggers are rookies nobody should pay attention to" to "if Democrats/Lamont/candidate-of-your-choice looses, it will show how "the blogs" can't be trusted".