Equal Access, Unequal Protection

AP: "With an official credential hanging from his neck, a young man stepped into the Whit House briefing room today as perhaps the first blogger to cover the daily press briefings."

John Palfrey: "[I]n this quicksilver technological environment, with such change underway in terms of what it means to write 'news' and communicate with others using the web, it's crazy that the law should establish second-class citizenship for bloggers or others who are engaged in the act of presenting or commenting on 'news.' . . . The notion of form over function strikes me as badly outdated.  And, worse, almost certainly counter-productive to the increasingly interesting and important public conversation that ordinary citizens are having with one another online."

At least no blogger in this hemisphere is doing time for it. (Yet. I think.) A colleague pointed me today to Human Rights First: Blogger Sentenced to 14 Years in Prison in Iran. Technorati has much more. So did Jeff Jarvis, and here's more from News.com.