In assuming that being covered would be a terrible burden and a threat to free speech, you’re swallowing the line peddled by the worst and most right-wing sections of the British press.  

In reality, the biggest threat to my free speech as a blogger is the fear that I might have to pay someone’s costs if I libel them.

These proposals are intended to free publishers from the fear of having to pay libel costs – legislation will remove that threat from those who choose to be self-regulated. That’s a tasty carrot. The stick – a risk of exemplary damages if you choose not to be regulated – is only frightening if you think you’re going to deliberately or recklessly disregard someone’s right in an outrageous way. That’s what the law will say. It’s hard to do that by accident – unlike libelling someone. It’s not a “terrible risk” at all.

Let me have the choice I want. Any blogger who disagrees with me will be able to make the opposite choice.

By the way, blogspot as a whole wouldn’t constitute a “relevant publisher” on all four criteria used in subsections (2) and (3) of the clause.

Also, you shouldn’t be so complacent to think that single-author personal blogs are actually exempt. It all comes down to how the authorities define “site”. If a blog on blogspot.com has one author and counts as a “site” then yes it might be exempt. But what makes you think that the regulators won’t argue that “blogspot.com” is actually the “site” and that all the tens of thousands of blogs on blogspot are part of a single large site? And would you care to be the blogger who has to spend thousands of pounds of his own money on laywer’s fees to argue against that interpretation?

I’ve grown to resent the idea that signing a petition or sending an email about a very specific issue is too easy to be meaningful. After all, our version of democracy is based on putting an X on a piece of paper once every four years, to block the group of people you like the least, so they can make choices on *every* issue, which are contrary to what they said they believed in when you voted. I believe this is bullshit. Adding your email address to a petition about a specific issue is infinitely more meaningful than voting. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.

I’m not going to talk anymore.  I’m going to play context-sensitive sarcastic music on my guitar to make people laugh and see how the libel suits deal with that.