Codes of Conduct
April 9th, 2007
There’s no one in the world I hate more than The Obstreperous Blogger. You know…the guy who regards his own blog as the ultimate soapbox from which he can spew thoughtless, kneejerk invective all day and night long. That’s bad enough–I mean, who wants to read three hundred straight entries decrying Wii users as “sissy-fags” or calling for immigrant concentration camps?–but, hey…if you own a website, it’s your sovereign right to bedeck and bespatter it with whatever you like, and if someone finds that content offensive, immoral, distasteful, etc…well, they can just close that tab and never look at your N-word-celebratin’ site again. Right? But the true Obstreperous Blogger can’t contain his vipertongued vituperatives: he has to sally forth and leave little coprolites of his “wisdom” (if using the word “cockfag” sixteen times in a single sentence can be said to indicate “wisdom”) in the comments sections of others’ blogs. That’s when the Obstreperous Blogger truly becomes annoying.
So…what do you do with people like that? Well, here on Pegritz.com, we gots a 100% No-Tolerance Policy for that kind of crap. If you leave a snide, stupid comment–whether bearing your signature or anonymous–it gets deleted. Period. Do not for ONE SECOND think I’m somehow responsible for the blather that others may leave here as comments…but, at the same time, don’t think that I’m going to leave such turd-nuggets on my site to pollute discussion or initiate flamewars.
Recently, Tim O’Reilly has drafted a Blogger’s Code of Conduct to provide the blogging community with a voluntary code by which signatory members could police their blogs for Obstreperous Jagoffs. And, for the most part, it’s a good document–certainly something whose sentiments I agree with. But take a look at this legal dissection of the terms used in the draft code, and…what’s this?
We define unacceptable content as anything included or linked to that:
- is being used to abuse, harass, stalk, or threaten others
- is libelous, knowingly false, ad-hominem, or misrepresents another person,
- infringes upon a copyright or trademark
- violates an obligation of confidentiality
- violates the privacy of others
What the hell does copyright have to do with an ethical code of conduct? As the Tristan Louis, author of “Blogger’s Code of Conduct: A Dissection,” notes:
Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, O’Reilly, AOL, etc… are all trademarks. I have not put a TM after every single one of those trademarks in posts I write on TNL.net, which technically makes me in violation of this effort, from a trademark standpoint.
For the purpose of this post, I am quoting the substantial majority of the post by Tim O’Reilly, which would technically put me in violation of his copyright. However, Tim has a Creative Commons License so he’s granting me some rights. Unfortunately, the rights granted by the CC license also say that you can’t reuse the content for commercial purpose: I run adsense ads on this site, which could be considered a commercial effort so, as such, I would technically be in violation of Tim’s copyright AND CC license. Under the terms of this, quoting substantial portion of copyrighted content would be a violation of the code. This means that blogs now have a choice: write only original content without extensive quoting or don’t run ads. It’s a tough choice for many bloggers.
Tough, indeed. I refuse to host any form of advertising here on Pegritz.com–so that’s not an issue with me…but I quote. I freely quote from sources that I am responding to, and nothing is going to change that. Coming from an academic background, I fully recognize the dangers of plagiarism and misquoting, which is why I am also meticulous about: 1) making sure any quoted material is accurately copy’n'pasted from its original source document, or at least making sure that, if I am summarizing or paraphrasing material, I do so accurately; and 2) that I attribute my source via hyperlinking. Go ahead, check out every entry on this blog–everytime I quote a source, I make sure that the quote is properly attributed and referenced. That’s not a violation of copyright; that’s fair use.
O’Reilly’s Code of Conduct is a decent step in the right direction, but the Code must restrict itself only to issues of interpersonal ethics–copyright issues are not something that needs to be addressed in a voluntary code of conduct…mainly because it’s far too sticky a situation. You don’t want a whole mess of copyfight crap sullying your otherwise-decent Code, would you?
Once that’s taken care of, I’ll gladly sign up. But not until then.
And, regardless, I reserve the inalienable right to call George W. Bush an asshole an asshole, and an idiot an idiot. The day I stop making inflammatory statements willingly is the day I receive a $100K/year teaching position that will obviate my sell my writing online.
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Rail against copyright law all you want... I mean there are definately problems with the system, but thems the rules.
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