I may have been too quick to re-label the Picker MobBlog; certainly I understand the pun involved but “blawg” strikes me as neither more nor less made up than “blog” itself.

Perhaps, though, the MobBlog label should be necessarily affixed to MobBlog content (via informal norms, if not by law), much as a certain printer will accept only certain print cartridges, or much as a much as a copyright owner must consent to certain re-uses of the copyrighted work. This is mixing and matching legal doctrines, but it’s part of the same pattern, I think. Is the inflexibility of the name not a problem, so long as there is competition in the blogosphere for commentary on Grokster, BrandX, etc.? That’s an unconventional way to frame the issue, which means that I’ve either mixed up issues that don’t belong together (though they strike me as conceptually related), or there is more than one way to analyze this group of problems. Why prefer an “adequate competition in the market for the combined ‘thing’” standard — which is good candidate — over any others?