Legal Outlook For Blogs--Revisited

This article was written by Urs Gasser, a research fellow at the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard Law school.  In this article, Gasser examines the legal outlook for MP3 blogs and whether or not they are prime for litigation.  To determine this, Gasser examines the economic significance detailing blogs' relatively small size, means of musical promotion, their 'niche' clientele, and the short-term availability of the linked files as viable legal defenses for MP3 Bloggers.  Gasser also makes a Fair Use argument for both Blog uploaders and downloaders--citing that the non-comercial status of these blogs and their promotional effect don't have a negative impact on said markets.  Gasser also acknowledges the role that record labels play in the survival of blogs--by intentionally leaking teasers and unreleased tracks.  
 
This article sets up several premises of my paper.  It establishes MP3 blogs as the new gate-keepers of the music industry, citing these blogs as the effective modes of instantaneous promotion.  An important point is Gasser's mentioning that the record industry voluntarily leaks tracks to these blogs--snubbing the copyright law they have sued for in the past.  This point reaffirms my claim that record-labels themselves have taken part in legitimizing MP3 blogs as a means of new media.

Written by correspondent Siddhartha Mitter, this article defines what an audio blogger actually is.  Mitter makes a claim that these MP3 bloggers are tastemakers--influencing their audience about what is good and what is not.  An important point is that audio bloggers don't just post an MP3 file, they also provide commentary, "a whimsical capsule review, with sound attached," he calls it.  He defines audio bloggers as unpaid obsessive music geeks who have capitalized on this generation's "sense of immediacy" about everything culture related.  He  acknowledges that bloggers have become the tastemaking elite, able to take acts such as Diplo from "obscurity to sensation" because of the 'buzz' these bloggere build.  Also mentioned briefly is a vague allusion to an unwritten Bloggers' Code of Conduct', in reference to how long a song is allowed to remain an downloadable.

This article raises several different issues pertinent to my topic.  First, it underscores the importance of the 'non-commercial' status of blogs in regards to their legality.  Second, it reaffirms the ideas that bloggers are the dictators of what is deemed "cool" as opposed to the industry public relation firms, music magazines, MTV (old media).  Perhaps most importantly, it parallels the mp3 blog and the book review.  An MP3 blog is contingent upon the fact that along with the MP3 posted, there is some sort of commentary to go along with it.  To me, this raises the question of Fair Use.  Obviously, book reviews are allowed to print excerpts of the book in their critiques, and the courts have ruled this as a transformative version of the original work.  My insinuation, is that MP3 blogs could fall under the same statute.  Does the fact the song is being being critiqued force the MP3 blog under the Fair Use Defense by creating a transformative work?