Free to blog?

Next time you're sitting down to do one of your meaningless blog rants, be thankful you can. A new blog I found via World Changing is The Committee to Protect Bloggers. They state their purpose being as follows:

The Committee to Protect Bloggers is devoted to the protection of bloggers around the world. In a host of countries around the world bloggers are routinely imprisoned for their activities. The blogging community should not leave the responsibility for their well-being in others' hands. The Committee has four primary spheres of activity.

• CPB will serve as a clearinghouse for information on incarcerated members of our community, as well as those whose lives have been taken from them because of their enthusiasm for the free exchange of information that blogging allows.
• CPB will serve as a pressure group to force unrecalcitrant governments to free imprisoned bloggers, and make restitution for tortured and murdered ones.
• CPB will bring to bear the formidable communicative power of the blogosphere to keep pressure on governments to stop

CPB will act as direct agents in negotiations to free imprisoned bloggers. We are driven by our enthusiasm for knowledge, by our affection for the possibilities of blogging, by the love we have for our fellow bloggers and by our belief in the free exchange of ideas. We are guided by Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. First thing’s first. Please join the Committee to Protect Bloggers by sending us your name, email and blog URL. We acknowledge the good work being done by the Committee to Protect Journalists, Reporters Without Borders and Bloggers Without Borders. There will be some overlap between our group and theirs. However, several things set us apart and give us a distinct focus, allowing us to become a valuable addition to the global free-speech community.

• We are concerned primarily, though not exclusively, with the well-being of the bloggers themselves. Press freedom is extremely valuable and will be agitated for, but our primary concern is keeping bloggers alive and free.
• We are concerned for them as bloggers, even if some are also journalists or activists.
• We are a group of bloggers, communicating via blogs, about other bloggers. We have some understanding of our fellows that most other groups do not. We also have immediate access to the communications power of the blogosphere.

As soon as we secure 501(c)3 status and become an official non-profit, we will use this space to solicit donations and free-will membership fees, as well as corporate memberships. In the meantime, please send us all the information you can on bloggers who are, or have been, imprisoned or otherwise the vicitims of state-sanctioned oppression. If there is something else you feel you would like to do for the Committee, please suggest away. If, you are a legal type, we definitely could use help in preparing and submitting our 501(c)3 application.

So thought y'all might want to care about this. Maybe even join and link to their site if you so care.