INTERESTING STUFF ABOUT COPYRIGHT here.

Plus what may be the first candidate for US Congress with her own blog. She looks pretty sketch though. Oh well, the ragged edge of innovation ain’t always pretty! (Link via Pigs and Fishes.)

It’s a fool’s game to try to predict the course that a new technology will take; but here are a couple rough thoughts on blogging candidates for political office.

Benefits to the candidate: If you have an idea-oriented campaign, blogging is a great way to show how your ideas respond to or flow out of events in the daily news. For example, if one of your big issues is cutting regulations that hinder small businesses, you’ll probably find something to blog about in the news every few days, at least. Each egregious example of just the sort of thing I’ll stop if you send me to Congress! is one more piece of evidence that you’re right on your pet issue(s), that you’ve identified a genuine problem, and that your opponent is obviously not as on-the-ball as you are. Moreover, each little piece of news that you blog will allow you to highlight your own practical solutions and philosophical approach. You can talk about what, specifically, you would do to fix this problem and why. You can also spotlight innovators who are already successfully using your approach.

If you have a scandal-oriented or scandal-plagued campaign, blogging might also be helpful. Your candidate site might become the place to go for updates on your opponent’s troubled financial dealings, for example–a sort of opposition-research Drudge Report. You could break news, ideally, but also simply show connections, truffle up overlooked aspects of the scandal, debunk your opponent’s excuses, and, of course, influence the spin. If you’re the one with bimbo eruptions or whatever, you can use the blog to get your spin out ASAP. (This is one of the ways Jesse Ventura used his email list, JesseNet, during his gubernatorial campaign. The press would run some report–sometimes accurate, sometimes not–in which Jesse ran his big mouth, and he would quickly issue a “clarification” or correction stating either that he didn’t say it or that he didn’t mean it quite the way it sounded. Obviously that’s not a scandal, but similar strategies would apply.)

It looks hip and with-it.

Having to produce material at a bloglike pace, with archives and everything, would mean you’d be going on the record a lot. That’s an obvious drawback (you might say something you’ll regret). But it could become a potential, hidden benefit if it gives the impression that you’re accountable and willing to say what you think.

Drawbacks for the candidate: It takes time–yours or your staffers’.

Blogging, unless you have a comments box, is one-way rather than two-way communication. You want to be able to know how your constituents are responding to your message, and blogging won’t necessarily give you that information.

Uh, not many people read blogs. Sure, some influential types (like op-ed journalists) read ’em a lot, but even the editor of the New York Times only has one vote.

I predict that while a few campaigns will end up blogging, most will not–although they might incorporate bloglike features (a news ticker, or a small blog along the side of the page, or something) onto pre-existing web pages.