EU wants to monitor blogs

“It should be clear who stands behind bloggers. The best option would be to have bloggers to declare it by themselves in order to know their professional and financial interests as well as the responsibility of their authors and publishers”, members of the European Parliament write in the report on the concentration and pluralism of the media in the European Union.

The report was tabled at the culture commission in early June. Although the proposal was not debated in the European parliament yet, it has grabbed attention from Europe’s internet community which totals dozens of millions of people. Some feel indignant that politicians want to regulate the field which is valuable exactly because of the lack of regulation. When Americans attacked Iraq, it was blogger Salam PAX who was describing the life in Baghdad. Fidel Castro in Cuba was outraged by blogger Yoani Sanchez who described the everyday life on the depressed island.

On the one hand, the European parliament has made an attempt towards marking the blogs. On the other hand, the Belarusian government has made the first steps towards control over the web. What do bloggers think about it? Blogger abrykos, the author of the 2007 best post under the version of 101blog.net, shares his views with the European Radio for Belarus.

“I asked myself if there were any Belarusian politicians who ran a blog on livejournal.com which can’t be controlled by the local security services. It turned out that only several politicians had blogs. Local politicians did not take use of these opportunities, while governments in Europe raise the issue of control over blogs. I think that these measures both the Belarusian authorities and European structures are very similar. It is clear that bloggers in other countries have long since made money by selling advertising and promoting their idea. But this is something done by many people for a long period of time. I can show you absolutely neutral Belarusian newspapers where certain goods or services are promoted. You will not be able to prove that the editorial office was paid for this promotion. I am skeptical about the initiative of the European parliament and about the steps taken by the Belarusian authorities, because it is rather difficult to control the internet. Smart people will always find ways to evade those measures. Therefore, people should educate and organize themselves”.

It is worth quoting a blogger from Europe who writes: “I ask not to consider me a dumb that can’t differentiate ads from a usual blog. Trust my brains and give freedom to my pen!”