Scary post at one of my favorite political blogs this morning:
http://billmon.org/archives/001236.htmlBack in January, I wrote a post about a session on the future of blogging at the World Economic Forum in Davos, in which I expressed a certain foreboding about that future:
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Unfortunately, for Whiskey Bar the future is now.
No, I'm not selling out to Time Warner ABC Disney Capital Cities Fox Viacom Clear Channel General Electric Microsoft Inc. But I have been informed by the owner of my host service that, effective April 1, he's going to start charging me for bandwidth usage.
He doesn't have much choice: He's just a wholesaler of space on other people's (big soulless corporate people's) machines. They've started charging him for bandwidth. And he's not at the bottom of the capitalist food chain -- I am.Whiskey Bar's answer is to post a Paypal link and ask for donations. But he's not happy about that solution, even though his is a well-established blog and it might actually work. I'm more concerned about blogs in general -- their prospects for diversity, their ability to express non-mainstream opinions, and potential barriers to new bloggers setting up shop.
Liberal blogs have suddenly emerged as the last, best hope of the left and of the Democratic Party in general. If cheap blogging becomes impossible, and we are left to the mercies of the soulless corporate media, there won't be much of a future for freedom and progressive ideals in this country.
So I'd like to see some brainstorming about what the options are. Would a Soros or one of the other deep-pocked left-leaning philanthropists pay to set up a server farm where liberal blogs could hang out? What sort of costs would be involved? Who would administer it and how would you keep out the disrupters while encouraging pure-hearted troublemakers?
This is important, people -- potentially as crucial to the future of democracy as BBV. I'd like to see the same intensity of thought being applied to it.