Loic Le Meur has been doing some interesting research on the extent of the European blogosphere.

An entry in my PublishersLunch Deluxe email this morning stressed a point that I’ve been thinking for some time: “All a blog is in today’s world is an easy-to-update web site that requires no technical knowledge (but comes with all kinds of great technical options: comments, permalinks, RSS feeds, etc.). ”

Whether something is called a blog or a web site is irrelevant. Blog critics continue to demonstrate how out-of-touch they are with technology when they so obviously fail to see this distinction. Of course there’s a lot of rubbish on the net but there also is a lot of trash in print and on TV. That’s irrelevant. What remains relevant and transforming about the Internet is that it allows people to express their ideas in an easy manner. From the PublishersLunch BlogWatch II email: “Blogs are turning the Internet into a writing a medium, and are enabling what has always made web sites most interesting: fresh stuff all the time.”

Techdirt points to some articles that examine the economics of patents and why patents may be inefficient in emerging markets. There seems to be some good intellectual property issues examined on this site.