First, we chip in to register a domain to host the blawgs. Blawgs.com is taken, as is blawg.org, so let's call it "blawgcoop.com" ("blawg co-op," see?). We'll install MT, then open it up to any law student, professor or practitioner (for starters) who would like to run an MT blawg there. Users will get their own password and an account and we'll assist where we can w/setup and basic design issues. Some or all users could have subdomains (myblog.blawgcoop.com), or they could just get their own directory w/in the main domain (blawgcoop.com/myblog). The only thing we'll ask in return is that users contribute equally to maintenance costs (hosting and annual domain registration at an annual cost of around $150/year to start). So if there were ten users, each one would pay $10/year. That's it. If we had 20 users, each one would pay $5/year. And what users would get in return would be far superior to BlogSpot (or Blog City, for that matter) in terms of quality of blogging environment and dependability, and it would also be far cheaper than TypePad.

People in my blogroll who use BlogSpot who I'd love to see on a better platform include:

Mixtape Marathon
L-cubed
Half-Cocked
So Sue Me
Musclehead
a mi parecer
Jeremy Blachman
Naked Furniture
Althouse
Tbagged
Undeniable Dilemma
Screaming Bean
Veritable Cornucopia

See, there's over a dozen candidates right there, plus all the new "blawgs" coming online all the time—if they started up at BlawgCoop, they'd automatically connected to the community of existing law bloggers. So what do you think? Is anyone interested in such a "service"? Would anyone like to set up an MT-powered blog and pay something like $10/year or less?

Of course, a new option I just learned about for people wanting to switch to a more stable and reliable system and have their own domain is bloghosts. Their plans start at $3/month, plus annual domain registration fees ($20-$30), so again it begins to add up, but you would get your own custom domain, which is certainly worth a bit more.

Possible drawbacks to the whole "blawgcoop" plan include scalability—if the "service" attracted a lot of users, costs would go up as bandwidth and disk space increased. But then, if everyone's sharing those costs, they wouldn't be too high for anyone. Theoretically the cost per user could vary depending on bandwidth/disk space, but that would only come into play if one user started using dramatically more than everyone else. Also, support would have to be limited so it didn't become a huge time drag on anyone, but perhaps support responsibilities could be shared as well among users w/varying levels of expertise. I'm sure there are other drawbacks, like security weaknesses I'm not aware of perhaps.

On the plus side, another potentially fun thing we could start with the "service" is an optional group blog to which all users would be invited to post. Welcome to the BlawgCoop. You will be assimilated. ;-)