The definition of “event promoter” is so loosely defined it could apply to a band that books its own shows or a teenage kid trying to get his favorite band into town.
The “event promoter” must be licensed and will pay $500 – $2000 depending on expected audience size.
To get the license, applicant must be over 21, get fingerprinted, submit to a background check, and jump over several other hurdles.
This proposed ordinance seems targeted towards smaller venues, since those with 500+ permanent seats are exempt.

These issues have been tirelessly highlighted by Jim DeRogatis at the Sun Times. There are two interviews that are very much worth reading: Alderman Shulter and the Department of Business Affairs. Please, if you're in Chicago, sign the "Stop the promoter’s ordinance petition" and contact your alderman. via CYSTSFTS

UPDATE: the ordinance has been put back into committee, to get more input from the community.

1. besides C|Net's objection to the terminology surrounding who is providing such access

For a second, i thought it might be an overzealous supporter, leaving a real comment on an unrelated entry (i delete those, but don't feed them to akismet). Then I looked at the post the comment was attached to: urbanlab. The post is unremarkable, save one thing:

It has the lowest post ID on my blog. Only a bot would dig through my blog that way. any human would have commented on the most recent post.

So as for the question of whether Ron Paul is spamming digg? I have no doubt that he is, and that his "supporters" are using bots to do it, thinking they're doing him a favor. Although this does put me in the awkward position of agreeing with rush limbaugh.

web 2.0, meet political graft. This will be the year that online political polls show up DOA. unless they start feeding poll results to akismet.