Is this ethical? Few words on female blogging…

PR Girl is asking that question when referring to women bloggers who and earn money with their sites. I think it is a very complicated issue, and I understand the concerns of well established voices of the blogosphere, still – did we not join it because the internet gave us the eternal freedom of speech? I would rather like to look at the results of those blogging activities that were mentioned during the blogher.com event.
I am currently very much occupied with the reasons for all of us to blog and I understand we all have different ones. Still, in the light of current law in the UK, it is against the law for a company to conduct any marketing activities (=pay bloggers to express their opinions as well) affecting and CHANGING financial behaviour of the brand consumers. I think it’s a brilliant way of judging blogger ethics too.
As far as the writing itself is concerned, we cannot ask every single blogging person to forget about projects based around earning money. It’s just a different type of blogging with its own issues. Isn’t?

When my fellow blogger living in Budapest, Jez Wegierski, posted about attending Global Voices summit somehow I didn't think about checking the organisation behind that event (even though I AM interested in events). I have just came across this very informative and extremely active portal now, and I must say I am well impressed. GlobalVoices is a large portal containing several sub-projects. Apart from the translation sites, I found the Global Voices Advocacy the most interesting one. It not only contains quite adequate data and insights on free speech on-line, but actually suggests tool to fight for it in those countries where some sites are banned.




Have a look at their 403 checker - it's a free to download tool helping to track back what sites were banned on one's pc. Also, some of those are included in the Access Denied Map. This is the type of info you do not find easily, here publicly available. I like when people bravely talk about issues and face the word with facts! Well done!
So, considering some involvement myself, I have contacted them asking about the aim of the site, and got a response from person called Portnoy: 'The main goal of Lingua and GV is to balance the world's information flow biased by MSM and with the help of more than 200 volunteers we have build a citizen media community based on bloggers around the world.
We tackle the 3 obstacles(censorship, digital divide, and language) toward a true global village with Global Voices Advocacy, Rising Voices, and Lingua. You can read more info here'
That is exactly what social media should do, don't you think?