[237] in Privacy_Forum
[ PRIVACY Forum ] Thoughts on Blogging Wars and Blogger's Code of
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (privacy@vortex.com)
Mon Apr 9 13:10:46 2007
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Date: Mon, 09 Apr 2007 09:33:28 -0700
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[ Forwarded from PFIR, since there are often obvious privacy issues
involved in these blogging-related controversies ... --Lauren-- ]
Thoughts on Blogging Wars and Blogger's Code of Conduct
( http://lauren.vortex.com/archive/000223.html )
Greetings. I've been getting a bunch of requests for opinions on
the "Blogger's Code of Conduct" being discussed over on Tim
O'Reilly's blog
( http://radar.oreilly.com/archives/2007/03/call_for_a_blog_1.html ).
I don't consider myself to be a high-power blogger. I started my
blog back in late 2003 at the urging of Joi Ito, and I post to it
sporadically -- only when I feel that I have something hopefully
useful to say. I've never allowed comments on my blog, and I
disabled trackbacks as soon as they began to be abused. My
discussion mailing lists and forums have always been moderated,
since day one.
Old-timers who have long known me may recall my predictions decades
ago regarding unmoderated communications media, originally in the
context of the Usenet network. In a nutshell (no pun intended,
Tim!) I've long expected that as access to unmoderated
"broadcasting" technologies became available to the public at large,
we'd see that the fraction of a percent of "bad actors" would wield
asymmetric power to damage and disrupt the good intentions of
everyone else.
That's not rocket science -- it's just human nature and the power
of these technologies at work.
Actually, it's a twin-pronged issue, that also relates to
(inevitably doomed) attempts to censor Internet content. This is
the case whether we're talking about U.S. laws ostensibly to protect
children against "objectionable" material, or countries like China,
Turkey, and Thailand (the latter two especially in the news right
now in this context) who believe -- in error -- that they can
control what their populations will access on the Net.
But as far as blogs and other public Internet forums are concerned,
as long as unmoderated submissions are permitted -- even with
promises of pulling down objectionable submissions as rapidly as
possible -- the asymmetric power to damage those forums and related
persons/organizations will remain.
Of course, if folks want to run totally unmoderated environments I
believe that's their choice, but I do feel that they should be held
responsible for the results, and the operators of such systems
should usually not be able to hide beyond a cloak of anonymity in
most cases of abuse. I say "usually" and "most" because there will
always be exceptional cases, especially in critical human rights
arenas. But in general, if you create the forum, my view is that
simply saying it's unmoderated doesn't buy you some sort of
exception from responsibility.
It's not clear to me that requiring submitters of blog comments to
include even "valid" e-mail addresses would accomplish much, given
the ease of creating and disposing of throwaway addresses. In many
contexts, an anonymous comment (if approved by a moderator) could be
just as valuable as a "fully attributed" one -- though this will
vary with the type of material under discussion.
Likewise, I'm not enthusiastic about "badge" systems to identify
sites (feel free to insert obligatory line from "Treasure of the
Sierra Madre" in this space). Most such badges are too easy to
abuse or misuse, and in some cases are an invitation to ultimately
failed (but still a hassle) imposed content filtering.
My bottom line on all this is actually pretty much what it was way
back in Usenix days. In the long run, human moderation systems
represent the best approach I know to help avoid the sorts of
problems under discussion. To the extent that they can be
successfully scaled, such moderation systems are also likely to be
among the key solutions to a range of intellectual property abuse
dilemmas on the Internet as well.
If human nature were different, we might not be facing such choices.
But human nature ain't about to change anytime soon, that's for sure.
--Lauren--
Lauren Weinstein
lauren@vortex.com or lauren@pfir.org
Tel: +1 (818) 225-2800
http://www.pfir.org/lauren
Co-Founder, PFIR
- People For Internet Responsibility - http://www.pfir.org
Co-Founder, IOIC
- International Open Internet Coalition - http://www.ioic.net
Founder, CIFIP
- California Initiative For Internet Privacy - http://www.cifip.org
Founder, PRIVACY Forum - http://www.vortex.com
Member, ACM Committee on Computers and Public Policy
Lauren's Blog: http://lauren.vortex.com
DayThink: http://daythink.vortex.com
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