In late August, a news item out of Philadelphia rippled across the Web: the city’s bloggers were being hit with a $300 tax. Outrage issued from America’s keyboards, though the initial report proved somewhat misleading.

The City of Brotherly Love hadn’t imposed a tax on blogs. Its officials had merely called for bloggers to purchase the same “business privilege license” required of all local enterprises that earn revenue. That was bad enough, however: in practice, it meant that bloggers making just a few dollars a year from Google ads faced a bill that would put their websites in the red many times over.