I certainly don’t want somebody deciding for me what I will and won’t “feel comfortable” with.

Bullying and slander on the grounds of race, age and rampant mysogyny can be needlessly hurtful and oppressive. I don’t know how to deal with it, but it is less constrained on the web.

But perhaps if Jeff showed a little concern about these genuine underlying issues rather than simply saying the govt is all bad, isn’t the govt minister nasty, etc, then there may be progress.

A voluntary code would force bloggers to disclose what kinds of content they permit at the site. Many sites are flooded not only with harassing posts, but also the posts of trolls, publicists, marketers, lobbyists and astroturfers. On the one hand, I’m supposed to be “sophisticated” enough to identify the fraudulent posters and thick-skinned enough to ignore all of the deliberately provocative posts. On the other hand, the whole point of such activity is to influence people who aren’t sophisticated, so they’ll get distracted or harassed off the board by the trolls, or fall under the influence of the publicists.

“Our readers are sophisticated” and “Smooth Operators Welcome” seem to be contradictory messages; the paid operatives aren’t hanging around discussion boards just to be ignored by savvy people. If the blog is connected to a traditional journalism site — say, the online presence of a major newspaper — then the “wink wink” approach to such activity becomes a big standards-and-practices problem. Voluntarily disclosing that “We do not monitor for fraud or abuse under the Bloggers’ Code” seems to be the least the site operator could do.

The government may looking to control what you can and can’t say on your blog.
Jeff Jarvis from BlogMachine has the story: God save us from the Queen’s censor.
I’m not going to comment on the matter because I agree with Jeff&#823…

“Right there you’re saying that people who disagree with O’Reilly and Wales show nothing but immaturity”… actually, she said “some of the more virulent attacks” show nothing except immaturity.

Not quite the same.

I think there’s a dodgy concept underlying the ideas proposed by O’Reilly, Wales and others that insinuates that the rule of law doesn’t apply on the internet. It does. They just don’t know how to apply it properly.

The Kathy Sierra business needs closer examination because I think something might be getting overlooked. Kathy Sierra published the IP number on her website

headrush.typepad.com/creating_passionate_users/2007/03/as_i_typ e_this_.html

of the alleged perpetrator of these threats that turned out to be someone using an ISP in Madrid, Spain (according to the IP number).

Once the victim, Kathy Sierra, had collected the evidence of a crime against her, she purportedly sent it to the Police, whereupon it should have been subject to secrecy on the grounds that the perpetrator wouldn’t get a fair trial if the details were made public. And what happens next? The whole scenario is sent to the New York Times, CNN, the BBC and many other minor news outlets. This seems to prove that there’s NO EVIDENCE of any CRIME having been committed against Kathy Sierra or anybody else. It would be logical to express ones anguish to the world if one had been stabbed. But without seeing the blood, the story remains fictitious.

BY PUBLISHING the IP number of the perpetrator Kathy Sierra has probably inadvertently stalled any further investigations into the crime. I don’t suppose she has even been given a crime number and I suspect the Law Enforcement Officers concerned pointed out that there is a delete button on her computer.

BY PUBLISHING THE IP number of the alleged perpetrator of a crime, she has committed a crime herself.

wikipedia.org/wiki/IP_address (http)

IP address legality in Europe

It is important that this significant difference in legal status be understood, because Websites that provide for third-party interception of IP addressing information and Traffic Data, without website visitor consent, are committing a criminal offence in the UK by virtue of the regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000, where through the requirements of European Council Decision 2005/222/JHA, such Website owners face serious sanctions, including the winding up of their businesses, being debarred from running a business and more than 2 years imprisonment.

P T B Anonymous

Google is neither affiliated with the authors of this page
NOR RESPONSIBLE FOR ITS CONTENT”.

End Quote

Google owns Blogger.com. Has Tim O’Reilly contacted Google with the section of his proposed code that must (by ipso facto) also apply to the platform as well as the blog administrator?

In an interview with Wired on Friday (13th) to promote his latest web 2.0 conference,O’Reilly said: “I’ve come to think the call for a code of conduct was a bit misguided.” The admission came two days after a post on his Radar blog entitled “Code of Conduct: Lessons Learned So Far”. In it he wrote: “I was proposing a modular set of terms of service, so somebody could say, ‘I don’t want this kind of behaviour.’ Now, a lot of people already do that, so it’s really much ado about nothing.”

The O’Reilly Saga continues in his comments section with commenters
posting ridiculous off-topic subjects and silly Youtube links. O’Reilly says he knows the person who attacked Kathy Sierra. He gets the victim and the perpetrator together on CNN – then somebody pumps up the NY Times publicity machinery for both the victim and the perpetrator. It doesn’t take a genius to see who may be benefiting from this little fracas.

Then O’Reilly starts blaming a random responder (Lessons Learned So Far) as being one of the attackers…and…he’s started deleting and prioritising the “best” replies, ones that mirror his opinions, which are severely lacking in substance. So, the entire “Lessons Learned So Far” thread must be accessed and read from the Google cached copy.

When bloggers respond from their websites, the sources seem to have been obliterated once the post is published – most of the track backs lead to O’Reilly’s Radar Website – and (duh! – as an Internet expert!) he is unaware that there are persistent error messages generated in his responders’ posts, so that it becomes a hit and miss game whether the post actually gets published or not.

Perhaps Tim’s involvement relates to this little gem.

Sierra’s current gig, along with her partner Bert Bates, is
developing and producing the bizarre new Head First series of books for O’Reilly.

P T B Anonymous