A Proposal For Unionizing Bloggers 259
mikesd81 writes "Coloumbia Journal Review writes about the possibility of unionizing bloggers. Chris Mooney writes 'Yes, dear reader: the Bloggers Guild of America may be on its way. The dispute between screen and television writers and media conglomerates has its roots, after all, in the Web.' He says, then, they get zero compensation for their products being distributed over the Internet. 'Bloggers often earn that same salary. There are exceptions, of course, those fortunate few who have become quasi-celebrities in their own right and found themselves, and their sites, snatched up by major media companies,' he goes on to say. He also adds that a bloggers guild could protect a blogger's intellectual property and help ensure they're compensated for it."
Oh god yes, the best idea ever (Score:5, Funny)
That way we can abuse their rights and they can go on strike!!!
Three words (Score:2, Insightful)
What. The. Fuck.
Honestly, you make up a word for "people writing regularly writing online and letting others comment on it" and all of a sudden you think you're something special.
Am I missing something?
Re:Three words (Score:5, Insightful)
No surprise there (Score:5, Insightful)
Like modern unions, this is a scam so that a few select people can wield power while deceiving everyone under them into thinking that they are necessary.
Unless someone is paying you to blog, blogging isn't a job. Shit, you certainly don't have to come home from your 9-5 job at Starbucks and blog about every fucking aspect of your life. Saying you want to be compensated for what you produce is like me asking the County to pay me for what I flush down the toilet. If you really do want to make a business out of it then charge for your content. I'm sure within a few, short days you'll realize how completely useless and trite the crap you spew out of your pie-hole is and exactly how little anyone really cares: 0.
I completely blame the media outlets for letting bloggers' egos get so ridiculously inflated to think that the trash they produce is somehow useful or important. People don't care what the 'blogosphere' is saying as they aren't a sample of any group but themselves. For fucks sake, if you want to write something meaningful, become a scientist and publish!
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Some of them do, and presumably he is in that article. But yes, the article is odd in that he seems to primarily be talking about people who don't get paid at all. The point of unions is to ensure rights for employees. There is some argument for capitalising on what you do - getting people to pay you - but that's not what I would call a union in the "worker's union" sense.
But then again, later on he does talk about primarily a union for people blogg
Re:No surprise there (Score:4, Interesting)
Bloggers are just more expressive versions of regular people (excluding of course the marketdroid ass hats who are in it only for the money), either their writing is of interest and a lot of people read it or it doesn't draw much attention beyond their particular local and remote group of friends.
Blogging does represents an interesting balance between expressing your private self and maintaining a level of digital privacy, writing about a subject you are interested in rather than writing about yourself and your family. Perhaps there will be a growth in private blogs housed on localised modem, firewall, router, switch open source web/mail servers. So will people start maintaining two blogs a public and a private blog, none of which they will maintain on data mined and privacy invaded corporate marketdroid servers like blogger, live spaces etc. (eww, data mining not only the blogs, but also readers comments and even who reads the blogs and how long they stay there and how often they return).
Nowdays you also have to wonder how much effect stumbleupon is having upon blog visit statitics. I end up visiting a lot of blogs often return visits to different entries on the same blog, but never by choice, it is just a random stumble event.
Re:No surprise there (Score:5, Informative)
Pal, I don't know if you're an American, but if it wasn't for unions, there wouldn't be a middle class in this country.
Pick up a history of labor in the US and see what working conditions here were like before the organized labor movement. Any of you have a nice relaxed day yesterday? Well, if it wasn't for labor unions, you'd have been working a full day yesterday. If you've taken a sick day in the past few years, you can thank the Union Label.
How about health insurance? You guys like that you can go to the doctor and an insurance company picks up the tab? That was the labor unions, too. I don't know if any of you have ever been seriously hurt on the job and gotten disability pay, it's because labor unions fought like hell to get that protection. Did you get Christmas off with pay? Guess who?
You may not realize it, but when miners, factory workers, truck drivers, etc were getting ground into dirt by an ownership class that was pissed off over the loss of slave labor, those workers got together and talked to one another, and stood together and got their heads beaten in for their trouble. A lot of them were killed by hired goons that worked for the factory owners. It took a lot of years of work by some really stand-up folks to make sure young women wouldn't get burned to death in a shirt factory that kept the doors chained so the girls wouldn't step outside for fresh air. And now we've got some check-pantsed pansies who think that if they just lick enough ass their bosses are going to take care of them, talking about how organized labor is "corrupt" but don't blink when Circuit City fires their best trained and most experienced workers just because they happened to have gotten a raise, then offered to hire them back at entry-level wages. Just wait until a few of them get laid off: Instant Progressive!
If it wasn't for labor unions, this country would be made up of a few owners and a lot of very poor workers. With the concerted anti-union effort that started with that doddering wrinkled prick Ronald Reagan, we're headed back in that direction right quick. You better believe the ownership class is organized, via lobbies and PACs and huge political contributions. I bet you "free-market" zombies don't mind that one bit. But as soon as a few factory workers get together and decide to look out for one another, it's demonized as "socialism" or worse.
Do bloggers need a union? Who the fuck knows. Does the US need an organized labor union? Only if you don't want to see your kids grow up to be serfs or indentured slaves, and want them to have a decent chance at the middle-class lifestyle that's becoming little more than a distant memory to you and me.
The next time you try to forget about the fact that your 401k is dropping value like a stone by reading Investors Business Daily, take a few minutes and google "Wobblies" or "IWW". Learn about how the US became an economic and industrial powerhouse. Just as it was for Poland and many other European countries, the labor union in America was a big part of our most productive era. And how the decline of our economic standing in the world coincides neatly with the defeat of the Union Movement at the hands of "pro-growth" "free-market"-types like the ones that now call themselves "Republican".
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That's what's missing.
Other than that, unions quite often seem a solution in search of a problem.
You will have to be careful how to do this... (Score:2)
WIOTY award (Score:2)
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No, No, Please No! (Score:5, Insightful)
Bruce
Next Comes Blogger Scabs (Score:2)
Coloumbia? (Score:2)
Not too surprising (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Not too surprising (Score:4, Funny)
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I question the whole idea that people have an inherent right to be paid when something they did turns out to have value because of the efforts of someone else. A great actor can stand o
Re:Not too surprising (Score:4, Insightful)
When the local factory is the only way to earn a living, organized labor helps a lot. It's monopoly of labor balancing out monopoly of employment. In cases like this it's merely the people who suck at their "job" wanting to ride the gravy train of those that succeed. If they can't make a living at blogging, they should go get one of the countless other jobs that pay fairly.
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Supply & Demand 101 (Score:5, Funny)
The vast majority of them earn every penny of that.
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Just what we need (Score:2)
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Well, say NBC wanted to use some of your blog posts as the basis for an episode of a sitcom. Without doing a lot of research on your own, and/or hiring your own lawyer (out of your own pocket), how would you ensure that NBC was offering fair compensation and not screwing you over? That's generally what these collective contracts are about.
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Post on any reputable legal forum with some links, some basic proof and your story, and you'll have lawyers coming out from the woodwork. Those lawyers will probably w
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Re:You have succinctly summed up leftist folly (Score:4, Insightful)
What about scientists? (Score:4, Interesting)
Also, scientists generally contribute far more intellectual energy to submitting their publications and they aren't paid for it either (although it is considered somewhat of a job expectation). As for protecting their IP, their articles generally cease being their own IP once a journal gets ahold of it, upon which it controls distribution and very often ransoms access to the public, making a profit for the journals - but not the scientists who wrote the paper. I think researchers may need to unionize earlier than bloggers if abuse of IP is what you're concerned about.
Re:What about scientists? (Score:5, Informative)
I put PDFs and BibTeX for all of my peer-reviewed papers online. You can read and cite them without going near a for-profit journal, even if that is where they were originally published. If other scientists don't do this, you should complain to them for not exercising their freedoms in a way that benefits you (or just bounce your connection via an HTTP proxy hosted in a university IP range, which gets you access to most things).
Also, bear in mind that the writings of a researcher are typically not regarded as having intrinsic value, they represent something which has value (the research) and are intended as advertising rather than a product. In contrast, the writings of a blogger are their product.
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Unions - are they needed? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Unions - are they needed? (Score:4, Insightful)
Now, there are some really good employers. They are few and far between. The VAST majority of corporations are more than happy to screw their employers at every opportunity. That's what unions are for. Yes, many unions are corrupt and greedy and irrational. But so are many corporations. You NEED a union as a check on the power of the company/employers. Period.
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Right now Unions have a general negative impact on the United States, forcing us to be uncompetitive in a world environment. But they are needed as well because non-union company will treat their employees well so they don't feel the need to Unionize. In general people think being in a Union is a good thing but much of the extra wage they make goes to union dues. Employee who perform better then others will not get rewarded, as easily. You cannot bargain on your own you can only bargai
Re:Unions - are they needed? (Score:5, Insightful)
It should also be noted that there are still issues that unions are fighting on, obviously what these issues are depends on where you look, but they exist. A simple situation that unions can and do address is pay, employers often do not want to pay employee's (especially at the lowest level) what they are worth, sure they will pay the minimum legal wage, they may even pay more than the minimum possible wage, however for an employee to take unilateral action (i.e. protest or demand extra pay on threat of leaving) would be pointless, they would be dismissed and the situation would remain the same, the dismissal serving as a disincentive for any other employee considering the same path. Obviously a union makes it possible for the entire workforce (or the group affected) to take action.
Now that example in the context of the US is usually seen as negative, it is usually assumed that this pressure by unions for higher pay (and often job protection) is unfair on the employer, and in some cases it is, especially when an employer *is* paying a fair wage, or where an employer *Cannot* pay more. In these cases the union should always be looking to protect its members interest, that is to say to safeguard the jobs of its members and achieving the best possible collective agreements, not to harm its members by forcing an employer to become uncompetitive in the marketplace (leading to potential job cuts or insolvency).
So in short, unions are valuable and useful, if, the members of a union have sufficient sway within it (so as to be able to present their views, usually by way of a ballot), and also if the union organisation is rational and reasonable when dealing with employers. Most importantly there should always be good communication between unions and employers, strikes should be avoided and used only as a last resort against uncooperative and abusive employers.
Modern unions also generally provide additional protections and services to members, things like legal advice (not just related to employment) and insurance, due to the fact that they (generally) represent a large pool of employed individuals, they are also in a position to use their size to arrange preferential prices for goods and services (in some cases housing) for their members. Finally they are also a potential ally for an employer who has issues with a particular employee, they are after all a third party and therefore able to give (one would hope) rational and informed (and partially independent) advice and guidance with regard to disciplinary action.
Anyway, unions are a good thing, as long as they are reasonable, every one I have dealt with has been professional and showed common sense in their dealings, although I must say some of the stories I hear coming from the US are that the unions that exist there are not quite set up in the same manner, in some cases apparently acting more a labour cartel than an organisation geared to protect vulnerable workers from exploitation (I hope that that is not a correct picture but simply that horror stories are more fun to tell than stories about successes).
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A simple situation that unions can and do address is pay, employers often do not want to pay employee's (especially at the lowest level) what they are worth, sure they will pay the minimum legal wage, they may even pay more than the minimum possible wage, however for an employee to take unilateral action (i.e. protest or demand extra pay on threat of leaving) would be pointless, they would be dismissed and the situation would remain the same, the dismissal serving as a disincentive for any other employee considering the same path.
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If in any industry unions are mandatory then that industry (and especially the unions within it) are so broken as to be unfit for purpose.
My point is simply that unions provide value and support, if your employer sues you tomorrow a union could probably (should) help you to fight back, without crippling yourself, not to mention that they will have experience doing it, that is potentially worth it. Obviously if you dont wa
Re:Unions - are they needed? (Score:4, Insightful)
Companies get the unions they deserve.
When a company pays its employees well, honors vacation time, hires the right number of staff to do the work, and pays a competitive wage, they don't get unionized. When companies cut pay on the rank and file to pay for massive executive bonuses, or cut medical benefits while posting profits to Wall Street, they see union strikes as per the airlines.
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Now again, this probably has something to do with where you come from and the kind of union activities you have seen or experienced but either way, I will try and explain why:
The internet internet is a good way of getting information out to people who are looking for it, or in some cases for bringing injustices to the attention of someone interested enough to take a stand, but only if whatever information is being put out there in a blog or article is interest
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Graphs and Charts Say: (Score:2)
Meanwhile, companies are moving jobs out of America and getting tax cuts to do it! American workers, the only non-unionized labor force in the modern western world, are non-coincidentally the only workers in the modern western world who are making less money, on average, than they were twenty years ago, due to inflation and taxes.
America's middle class is undoubtedly disappearing, but there ar
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A Union Doesn't Make Any Sense... (Score:5, Insightful)
Who loses money if the bloggers go on strike? For that matter, if they weren't blogging, how would we even know they were on strike? By the lack of updates? I doubt the print media would care enough to inform us.
A guild in the sense of a trade organization might make sense, but a union?
You might just as sensibly organize the elephants and have them strike if ivory poaching continues.
Something smoking in Hollywood... (Score:2)
I had my website for ten years and I still haven't seen a salary yet. If I join the union, who's paying my salary? Where are these major media companies who want to buy my website?
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If i was paranoid about conspiracies, id say this is being secretly pushed by the 'media' so as to pretty much wipe out the blog 'competition'.
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I'm not talking about how practical enforcement will be, only the 'rules' that will appear.
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And those "rules" will make absolutely no difference to someone who decides not to join the union. Surprisingly, a new organisation created for the sole purpose of pretending to be important does not yet trump either the law of the land or economic market forces!
forget the bloggers (Score:4, Funny)
The Hackers Guild could then provide *protection* to the Bloggers Guild - for a small fee, of course...
What?! (Score:3, Funny)
OMG! The bloggers are on strike, oh noes!! Where will I get my random crap and aerated opinions from?!!!
It's almost as ridiculous as the 'Students Unions' we have in Universities here...
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Once a union (Score:3, Insightful)
Unions had/have their place, but this isn't one of those places.
unionizing (Score:5, Funny)
Would this be mandatory? (Score:4, Insightful)
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That's not the case everywhere [nrtw.org].
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Nothing prevents some other studio (who doesn't have a contract with the writer's guild) from making movies using non-guild writers. There is no law that binds them, only contracts.
Hence independent studios. People just out of school, or doing this on the side, running their films on a shoestring budget. They generally are not part of the big guilds, after all! But they're not part of the big studios that have the contracts with the writers' guilds, so even if they continue to work now, that doesn't go against the strike.
Reputation first, then Money (Score:2)
Rather, the value will be in legitmizing blogging and creating a source for reputation. The Gizmondo-CES prank confirms some people's worst fears -- that bloggers are not professional journalists, may not be worthy of admission into press events (or may not enjoy to the same freedom of the press laws). A union that helps ce
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But this is absolutely moronic. Does every blogger really have such an overinflated sense of importance? Any monkey can be a blogger, hell *I* have a blog, thus proving that it doesn't really take a huge amount of skill. Every emo kid on Facebook/MySpace/LiveJournal is a damn blogger, by definition. Journalists/writers are generally vetted by an employer to show that their worthy of pay, thus worth
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Not much into the freedom of association then? If a union must force its members to join, what does that tell you about its utility?
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A union that helps certify and regulate bloggers could boost professionalism and disavow/sanction childish misbehavior.
And censure those who don't toe the party line.
FalconOr ... (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Or ...What did your dog do today (Score:2, Funny)
After he won "Best in Show" at the 2006 Mayflower Kennel Club Dog Show, his blog was serialized in Breeders Times and he just doesn't get time to go for regular walkies anymore.
no value so no leverage (Score:5, Insightful)
Where, exactly would a group of bloggers create enough value that "we" would be prepared to pay extra to have them continue?
They have no leverage as most of them are hobbyists and do it more for their own benefit and self-image than for anyone else. If they stopped, they would not be missed and there would not be a hole in our lives that needed filling (possibly the reverse!!!)
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Vega (Score:2)
the delivery time from Vega is too long.
You didn't go anywhere, you dropped right through.
Falconthere's one problem with your cunning plan.... (Score:5, Insightful)
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Bad, bad, bad idea!! (Score:2, Insightful)
Unions are the cause of a lot problems in the U.S. In Illinois, you are required to join a union if your job function is unionized. They're huge bureaucratic entities that are corrupt, they waste time, and they especially waste money. I've been in a union (UFCW), and it sucked. Unions are always talking about striking while at the same time take a large chunk of money out one's paycheck. These "union dues" or extortion fees would never, ever be seen again. And the biggest problem with unions is that it is v
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Obligatory Douglas Adams reference (Score:3, Funny)
If a blogger goes on strike ... (Score:2)
rtfa, and then read it again. (Score:2, Insightful)
The article, in suggesting that bloggers organize to receive a cut of proceeds, is not talking about your next door neighbor and his diary-blog. The article is referring only to bloggers writing for websites that make considerable ad revenue.
I'm not all too familiar with the scene, but, according to the article, much of Daily Kos' and the Huffington Post's content is supplied by smalltime bloggers who write
Nice one (Score:2)
Closed Shop (Score:2)
A basic difference between bloggers and writers (Score:2)
Yeah, unlike WGA members, bloggers earn exactly what they're worth.
Unionizing (Score:2, Funny)
An impostor would probably say 'yoon-yun-ize' while a real scientist would more likely say 'un-ion-ize'.
When I read the headline, I was thinking of ions as well.
Cost? (Score:2)
Unionizing is missing the point (Score:2)
Year going by fast. (Score:2)
What? (Score:2)
My gut... (Score:2)
Were bloggers to organize, a threshold would have t
Professionals vs Amateurs (Score:3, Informative)
God damn. I know that in this era and country there is this cultural phenomenon which consists in discrediting exports/professionals with respect to amateurs, but could we at least remember the difference between an amateur and a professional?
This whole 'blogger=journalist' movement is ridiculous and quite insulting to actual career journalists. I don't know how it's like in the US but here in France you need a license to call yourself a journalist (Disclaimer : my father was a French journalist), so if you want to be called that that's what you've gotta obtain. And don't get me started with the FUD some of you would like to give me about having the government/an organisation to decide who's a journalist, because here any journalist from the most Marxist to the most neo-fascist has their license.
Perhaps a new union model is in order (Score:2, Funny)
Reminds me... (Score:3, Funny)
VROOMFONDEL: That's right. You'll have a national philosopher's strike on your hands.
DEEP THOUGHT:Who will that inconvenience?
MAJIKTHISE: Never you mind who it'll inconvenience you box of black legging binary bits! It'll hurt, buster! It'll hurt!
Comment removed (Score:3, Insightful)
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Re:Unionizing (Score:5, Interesting)
Incidentally:
http://membership.acs.org/W/WNY/db2005/db0305.html [acs.org]
'Since I know the chemical profession best, I devised two questions, for instance, to tell a chemist from a nonchemist. Here they are:
(1) How do you pronounce UNIONIZED?
(2) What is a mole?
In response to the first question, the nonchemist is bound to say "YOO-yun-ized," which is the logical pronunciation, and the dictionary pronunciation, too. The chemist, however, would never think of such a thing; he would say without a moment's hesitation: "un- EYE -on-ized."
In response to the second question, the nonchemist is bound to say, "A little furry animal that burrows underground," unless he is a civil engineer who will say, "A breakwater." A chemist, on the other hand, will clear his throat, and say, "Well, it's like this -" and keep talking for hours.
There's my cue. Shall we talk about the chemical version of the little furry animal?"
~~"To Tell a Chemist" Isaac Asimov 1965'
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Re:Unions (Score:5, Insightful)
It's the union that covers all metallurgic works, including car-making.
They actually have a war chest that covers salaries while on strike, so it can go-on for a longer time to FORCE the Bosses to give-in before it cost them their own bonuses.
=> Ig-Metal affiliates are among the best paid in their work line in Europe.
Please remember Capitalism is "rule of the strongest", and that as a worker you have to make it work for you, the lowest link in the pyramid.
"When everything else has failed, give it a kick. It will satisfy a deep urge and sometime even make it work" (Me) - works also quite well for the non-physical world.