I Am This Blog's Sole Reader

I posted this today in comments to a news sstory about lawsuits for sharing news stories on blogs.



This is one reason why my blog is totally private. I am its sole reader!

As a professional trader, I had kept a trading journal on my PC for years. I would clip and paste articles that had influenced my trading or the financial markets in general. It was becoming such a large document on my PC that I started my finance blog as a personal diary of my trading. It was always intended to be private, especially with my personal financial data that was included.

After about two months, I was shocked when I started getting emails and private messages through the community boards regarding my blog. I thought it was private only because no one else would be interested in it. I was surprised to learn that other people were interested. Within a few months, I was getting 1000 hits a week of people reading my blog. The Wall Street Journal even mentioned and highlighted it, and reporters started to call me for my opinions. It was flattering to my ego that so many people valued my insights and opinions, but I was still amazed that anyone would even care about what I wrote about that began as a little online diary. I was stunned to realize that without even wanting to, I had become a journalist! My standards went up, I began to write more with readers in mind, and I put fewer personal things in my blog posts.

Several months ago, I started reading a few accounts of bloggers being sued by large news outfits that were challenging the fair use laws, pushing the envelope. In anticipation of the remote possibility of this type of lawsuit, I learned that I could make my blog private, and I closed my blog so that now, I am the only person who can view it. Several people wrote to me, asking for access. I denied access to all of them. Not even my own mother can read it now. I took my blog back to its original purpose -- a personal record and diary of my trading.

I post bits and pieces of many news stories, not to share them with the world (hard to "share" something that I am its sole reader), but as a record of what influences my thinking and trading, and also as a record of this recession and financial crisis.

I fully anticipate that this economic crisis is going to get MUCH worse. Our debt is so staggering, that economic collapse, including loss of faith in our government and currency, are inevitable. My record, private as it is, may stand as a chronicle some day of how this catastrophe all happened. But that's another story.

I hope that this author will team up with other bloggers and perhaps some free speech lawyers, including perhaps -- dare I say it -- the ACLU, to kick some Righthaven/LVRJ butt in the courts. Is saving a newspaper article, or clipping and pasting it from a website, the same thing? Is it illegal to just save an article for personal use? This is dangerous territory to tread in an era when all our freedoms are in danger.

Is there a chilling effect from this type of lawsuit? Absolutely! I know because that's one reason (among several) why I took my own successful and growing blog private!