Blogger’s Code of Boring Irrelevance

Tim O’Reilly is pushing a Bloggers’ Code of Conduct. Frankly this whole idea is bad, but what he proposes goes so far beyond anything I imagined I find it hard to believe. If adopted, it would eviscerate the blogosphere and censor millions of voices. Fortunately it won’t be adopted. Let’s see why.

1. We take responsibility for our own words and for the comments we allow on our blog.

Sorry. No. We take responsibility for our own words. Full stop. Other people are responsible for their own words.

But O’Reilly goes further than merely proposing to “take responsibility”. By that he means

We define unacceptable content as anything included or linked to that:

Um, “linked to”? You mean Kathy Sierra violated this very code of conduct when she linked to the posts and images that were threatening her?

“is being used to abuse, harass, stalk, or threaten others”

O’Reilly’s thinking of Kathy Sierra here, but I’m thinking of George W. Bush, Tony Blair, Hilary Clinton, John McCain, Michael Bloomberg, and Bruce Ratner. (I’m getting a little parochial with those last two, but isn’t that the point of blogs?) If someone wants to abuse and harass the president, prime minister, or mayor that’s their right. If someone wants to stalk a candidate on the campaign trail with a giant chicken, they can. If people being evicted from their homes want to show up outside a developer’s favorite restaurant with a 20 foot inflatable rat while he’s eating dinner with his family, a blog would be a very good way to organize that.

“is libelous, knowingly false, ad-hominem, or misrepresents another person”

No. If I want to call the president of the United States a delusional, incompetent boob, I can. If I want to say Tony Blair has all the integrity of an auto salesman desperately trying to make his monthly quota or else he’ll be fired, I can. If I want to call Mao an ignorant mass murderer with delusions of godhood, I can.

“infringes upon a copyright or trademark”

The Web is powerful precisely because it allows people to get out from under the weight of legal systems designed to protect the interests of the monied and powerful. If I want to publish a picture that shows Ronald McDonald smoking a joint made out of the rain forests, I can. I don’t care who has trademarked what.

“Violates an obligation of confidentiality”

I.e. we won’t publish whistleblowers. Think Secret might as well just shut down now.

“Violates the privacy of others”

In other words a blog shouldn’t even have the same rights to publish pictures of the mayor or the governor on his vacation that we accord to the National Enquirer. A mother waiting for her child support check can’t blog about the father’s financial troubles.

“2. We won’t say anything online that we wouldn’t say in person.”

No. Should someone in the closet to their family be forced to stay in on the Web? Should an abused wife living in a shelter refrain from calling her husband a scumbag on her blog because she’d be afraid he’d beat her if she said that in person? Of course not. The Net is a freeing force precisely because it allows people to say things they wouldn’t say in person. This is a feature, not a bug.

“3. If tensions escalate, we will connect privately before we respond publicly.”

So when someone calumnies me I’m supposed to wait until I can talk to them privately before responding? When most people don’t even put their e-mail addresses anywhere obvious on their blog? You’ve got to be kidding.

The proper response to bad speech is more speech. O’Reilly wants to push that response underground, though, so only the original attack remains. If someone says something I don’t like, I have the right to respond immediately and publicly. I don’t have to wait for their approval before proceeding, nor should I.

“When we believe someone is unfairly attacking another, we take action.”

OK, but “If those published comments could be construed as a threat, and the perpetrator doesn’t withdraw them and apologize, we will cooperate with law enforcement to protect the target of the threat.” Are you really sure about this? All law enforcement, all the time? Should the Red Cross cooperate with the C.I.A.? Should anyone cooperate with the Chinese police? How about the Mexican police that are often in bed with drug dealers?

“5. We do not allow anonymous comments.”

I do allow anonymous and pseudonymous commenters and I intend to continue doing so. Sometimes it’s important to allow someone to speak who would otherwise be threatened with the loss of a job, physical harm, or other problems for speaking out. Sometimes it’s just easier for someone to comment if they don’t have to register and be confirmed first. Either way I don’t intend to shut down conversation in order to make lawyers’ jobs easier when they want to serve a subpoena.

You know it’s interesting that although not allowing anonymous comments, they’re developing this on an anonymously editable WIKI. Since they told me (and everyone), “Feel free to edit or add to these” I cut the code down to the one point that actually made sense, “We take responsibility for our own words.” As expected, it lasted about two minutes before being reverted.

“6. We ignore the trolls.”

Sensible, though often even if someone is just trolling you still need to respond. Suppose a rumor site were to post a made-up report that Macs were assembled in China by eight-year old children working 16 hour shifts just to attract attention and get a rise out of Apple. Shouldn’t Apple deny this vigorously? Again, the proper response to bad speech is more speech, not less.

“7. We encourage blog hosts to enforce more vigorously their terms of service”

Given that almost every point they’re asking hosts to enforce is horribly wrong, and would be colossally damaging to the blogosphere, I naturally can’t support this point either.

Off the Rails

Fortunately O’Reilly and the others pushing this proposal have effectively no power to promulgate it. It’s a very bad idea and it’s doomed to failure. I do understand where he’s coming from given recent events, but he’s trying to develop a broad policy based on a very provincial, limited view. He has not taken into account the needs of an international community that’s engaged in spirited discussion on many very sensitive topics in the middle of some incredibly repressive regimes. What’s he proposing might barely be acceptable for a small technical community in the United States that’s primarily composed of people like me, himself, and Kathy Sierra talking about a small subset of our interests. It’s certainly not even remotely plausible beyond that limited sphere.

Blogs are exciting and important because they’re not just about a small community of übergeeks. Blogs are exciting because they give a voice to the voiceless. As A.J. Leibling wrote, “Freedom of the press belongs to the man owns one.” Blogs allow a lot more people to own presses. Let’s not try to muzzle bloggers so they become just as boring and irrelevant as the mainstream media and the typical O’Reilly book.

This entry was posted on Monday, April 9th, 2007 at 5:18 AM and is filed under Blogging. You can follow any responses to this entry through the Atom feed. You can make a comment, Digg this story, or trackback from your own site.