p2pnet - rss feed: Codes of Conduct v Free Speech
p2pnet.net news view:- Should or shouldn’t there be an online code of conduct? Tim O’Reilly and Jimmy Wales believe there should be. I disagree with them, and said so when Vancouver Sun reporter Peter Wilson asked me how I saw things.
p2pnet is based on Vancouver Island in British Columbia, Canada, and I live in a small village about 1.5 hours north of Victoria, BC’s capital on the end of the island.
My wife, Liz, and I educate our daughter, Emma, almost 11, at home. We work hard to teach her values and standards, and being able to express herself freely is possibly the most important of those.
Our most traumatic experiences as a family came when I received a letter from a heavyweight lawyer telling me I was being sued for libel by Sharman Networks, owner of the p2p file sharing application, Kazaa, and its boss, Nikki Hemming.
I went into a flat spin. p2pnet isn’t a business, it’s a commitment, and the only reason it’s still online is because it’s currently being wholly supported by a US businessman who, for the time being, prefers to remain anonymous.
I’m paid by only two of the advertisers and believe me, that goes nowhere near meeting the site’s expenses, or my family’s.
When I first heard from multi-million-dollar Sharman Networks and Hemming, I didn’t have legal representation and for 10 days, or so, none of us got much rest as we tried to figure out what we could do.
I now have well-known Canadian media lawyer Dan Burnett on my side, pro bono, but back then, it was a terrifying experience for us all, and possibly for Emma most of all.
But in our home, anything and everything is discussed openly and freely. When Emma asks a question - and she never stops - we give her the best answer we can, often turning to the Net to amplify and expand on our answers. And Emma herself spends part of her day, every day, talking to other home-schooled friends, on and off the island.
The Net is a vital part of her life and she uses it, tapping its mind-boggling range of data and information to answer her own questions. That wouldn’t be possible without unrestrained freedom of speech.
I’ve elected to take this to trial and I’m waiting for a date.
I’ve been claiming to support freedom of speech ever since p2pnet first went online and the Kazaa case forced me to examine whether or not I really meant what I’d been saying.
I did, and I do.
p2pnet allows anonymous comments. I don’t know who posts them, I don’t see them before they go up, and I often don’t see them at all. I don’t have time to examine every post.
Sharman Networks, per se, pulled out of the lawsuit, leaving Hemming by herself, and she purports to believe I keep logs which give me the IP addresses of everyone who posts.
I don’t and I never have done. Ever. And nor will I.
I’ve elected to take this to trial and I’m waiting for a date. Click here if you want details. It’ll be an extremely interesting case and will allow me to speak freely, something I can’t do at the moment because of legal constraints.
Back to codes of conduct, in his story, Wilson says:
Hurtful words fly swiftly and hateful things are often said in haste on the Net, but Lake Cowichan blogger Jon Newton doesn’t believe there’s any need for a code of conduct for him or for his peers.
He’s solidly against recent proposals — following death threats against popular U.S. blogger Kathy Sierra posted in the comments area of a blog — for a code of conduct to make the sometimes-abusive arena of the blogosphere a more civil place.
“A kind of unspoken code of conduct already exists, because, for the most part, members of the Net community are responsible people,” Newton said in a Friday posting to his p2pnet blog (www.p2pnet.net).
“No matter how well-intended, a formal code of conduct would be the thin edge of a very nasty wedge.”
The main thrust of code proposals is aimed at the comment areas of blogs, where often anonymous posters have been known to unleash streams of abuse as fast as their fingers can type.
Newton himself is well aware of the legal problems that can result from this, at least for Canadian bloggers - who are not protected by law, as they are in the U.S., from being sued for third-party comments.
Newton is facing a libel suit filed by Nikki Hemmings, CEO of Australian-based Sharman Networks, which owns Kazaa, the peer-to-peer file sharing network. Hemmings objected to both an Associated Press story posted by Newton and to comments on that piece - both of which have since been taken down.
In an e-mail interview, Newton said he still does not pre-screen the comments on his blog, nor has he felt the need to become more worried about the comments or more vigilant in monitoring them.
But he would like to see a similar law in Canada that protects bloggers for liability for comments made on their sites.
“As things stand, anyone from a child posting something someone didn’t like to a mega-corporation could find themselves in the same boat - a vessel with a huge hole in the bottom,” said Newton.
I should expand, a little, on, “A kind of unspoken code of conduct already exists, because, for the most part, members of the Net community are responsible people.”
I would never support a Code of Conduct which in any way inhibits complete freedom of expression. But this doesn’t mean I allow literally anyone to post literally anything.
When someone is about to leave a post, they see this, in large bold type between two bright red lines:
____________________________________________
p2pnet is an open content news site. We allow anonymous comments, but we don’t in any way accept responsiblity for them. We don’t monitor Readers’ Writes. But we sometimes post them as stories. We delete anything that’s obscene or denigrates gender or religion.
April 14th, 2007 at 10:49 am
http://blogs.zdnet.com/keen/?p=124
April 14th, 2007 at 7:45 pm
any code of conduct shouldn’t be mandatory… have it much like html standards, they exist and its a good idea to stick to them but no-one is going to jail you for not doing so (as much as some of us would like to :p) Bloggers could display a funky graphic that confirms that their blog complies to the ‘code of conduct’
The only other code of conduct i’d support would be one that a blogger enforces upon themselves and displays publically on their site, something along the lines of:
i blogger will uphold the following standards while posting on my blog:
list of ethical stuff of their own choosing…
April 14th, 2007 at 10:21 pm
It’s fascinating to me to what the net-culture capitulate piece by pece to what I can only call the rampant pussification of the world: the idea that anything worded beyond the most tepidly apathetic “I dunno if I agree of not” level of “inoffensiveness” is automatically verboten.
Moreover, the mere fact that the above poster could discuss the idea of a “mandatory” code of conduct in a serious tone is disquieting in the extreme. The idea of a “mandatory” speech-code SHOULD be met with a hearty, resounding “fuck off and die” — instead, the front-most wedge of creeping totalitarianism is greeted with something between the “benefit of the doubt”, and a disinterested yawn.
The most disquieting thing about this whole issue is whats-her-name, cowering in her house, ‘terrified’ because of a few off-hand remarks in a few blogs. It’s as if “we, as a society” are incapable of differentiating between WORD and DEED — the stupid bitch is more likely to be physically harmed via carjacking or a random mugging than by some disgruntled blogger. Unfortunately, this individual - whom I can just barely dignify with the term “stupid cunt” — seems more terrified by the PRINTED WORDS in a blog, than by the VERY REAL dangers posed by gang-members and sundry other thugs (who most likely DO NOT blog.)
We’re basically fucked. If THIS is what we’ve become, I sincerely hope Al Quaeda wins. THEN the stupid bitch’ll get a taste of REAL fear.
(yes, Virginia, I AM an asshole!!!
April 15th, 2007 at 6:17 am
There is, I undestand, a more scrutinised code of ethics (same as conduct, same as decency) that the ones that apply to lawyers.
Yet it is tolerated that lawyers openly:
1. Lie in court, to also lawyer judges, I may add. Lawyers are exempt of being acused of perjury. A favorite method of lying is by interpreting the law in the most favorable to the lawyers’s client, possibly a drug dealer or a murderer.
2. Lie to their clients (euphemism for “customer”) so as to extract the most money from the client. A favorite lie is that laws are so complex so court decisions are unpredictable. A better, non lying explanation is that court decisions are unpredictable is that most judges are plain stupid former lawyers.
3. Take so many customers that they cannot represent well most or some of them.
4. Take cases that fall outside their area of expertise and as a rsult wind up failing in providing a fairly reasonable representation.
And what the chances has a customer of filing a successful “ethics” complaint? None. The coplaints are eventually processed by lawyers or lawyer-judges with an obvious conflict of interest because their priority is the protection of the lawyers proffesion (their own), not the lawyer customers.
To the point: All ethics codes are a waste of time. Even God must have realized that, as his 10 commandments are hardly followed, even by world leaders such as Stalin, Hitler, Bush, just to name a few in recent history from basically christian countries.
Also to the point: We must conclude that decency (and there are many decent lawyers, and world leaders and people) it has nothing to do with written codes of decency. It has to o with upbringing and education, which are mostly failing to do what is required to make decent citizens and citizens that have learned to tolerate disliked speech and opinions.
So, if the code of conduct for lawyers, one of the the most scrutinized, is utterly worthless and a waste, why bother to make additional codes of conducts or speech? The required work is in the area of education.
BTW, and so that it is clear where i come from, I have been personally sued four time in the last 10 years for things I have allegedly said, The first case was dismissed after it was determined that the acusation was made up (by the suing lawyer, in my opinion). It was part of a lawsuit that attemped to take away from my family what we owned, an inherited catalog of songs and music that a music publisher wanted to steal at all costs. The last three cases are lawsuits from a lawyer (who appears to dislike my opinions and has never tought to be tolerant to criticism and opinions) who, in my opinion, did a terrible job in represented my family in the fist lawsuit. These cases are still pending to go to trial.
Rafael Venegas
gvenegas.com
April 15th, 2007 at 6:19 am
“There is, I undestand, a more scrutinised code of ethics (same as conduct, same as decency) that the ones that apply to lawyers.”
Corrected:
There is NOT, I undestand, a more scrutinised code of ethics (same as conduct, same as decency) that the ones that apply to lawyers.
Rafael Venegas
gvenegas.com
April 15th, 2007 at 9:41 am
Gvenegas:
The entire “profession” of law is BASED on deceit and bullshit: that’s one of the reasons that the disgusting phenomenon known as “legalese” exists — so that Average Joe Schuck citizens are damn near incapable of even beginning to understand what’s “legal” and what’s not.
But my main problem with the idea of a “bloggers” code of conduct” (or any attempt to regulate the “conduct’ of people online) is that it fails to draw the line between STATEMENTS and ACTIONS. (This is the same error commited IRL, when individuals get cited for “assaults” which don’t actually involve physical contact. “Assault” and “battery” are two seperate offenses, and only “battery” requires physical contact.
“public discourse” in all other media, and face-to-face contact, has become unimaginably vapid and gutless — primarily because the most thin-skinned and priggish among us have been granted dictatorial veto-power so that nobody gets “offended”.
Well, to put it bluntly: fuck “sensitivity”, and if that stupid bitch wants to cower in her hose “terrified” because somebody happened to say something “offensive” on a blog about her, she can stay in her fuckin’ house until she starves to death.
It’s way past time for people to wake the FUCK up, and realize that we’re plummeting headlong into an abyss of cuddly, inoffensive fascistic bullshit.
April 15th, 2007 at 11:49 am
“The entire “profession” of law is BASED on deceit and bullshit: that’s one of the reasons that the disgusting phenomenon known as “legalese” exists — so that Average Joe Schuck citizens are damn near incapable of even beginning to understand what’s “legal” and what’s not.”
And is it not incredible that people repeat without thinking what they are saying “ignorance of the law is no excuse”…. when even lawyers and judges cannot agree on what most laws, the spaghetized ones, mean.
One of the more spagetized laws are those relating to copyright, yet some lawyers (who sue kids for sharing files) sue the kids…. just to make money by scaring youth.
The point you make are valid.
Rafael venegas
gvenegas.com
April 15th, 2007 at 2:57 pm
You are such a hypocrite!
the only reason you are still online is because your whole endeavour is currently being wholly supported by a US businessman who, for the time being, “prefers” to remain anonymous.
For the time being what else do you want to conceal from your readers? Free speech and ethics my arse!
What agenda does this clandestine US businessman have? You helping him in a lawsuit? You publicising his positions and business? Where are your ethics man?
Do you jump when he says jump? and how high? Which articles is he placing? Which articles is he vetting? What stories are NOT being told because he owns your ass?
You owe it to your readers to be honest? What is more inportant? Your honesty or his money? Why keep his identity a secret?
Too much of a coward to face the music if the anonymous benefactor is exposed?
How do we know its not the RIAA? or a Lawyer?
You are a joke of a journalist if you refuse to disclose the very source of your existence.
April 15th, 2007 at 3:39 pm
Good, good for you, and keep it up!
April 15th, 2007 at 6:15 pm
Tell us who YOU are , o brave one
Too much of a coward to face the ridicule of the rest of us ?
Do you Jump when your employers order you to troll here ?
Why keep your identity a secret ?
Is it because if your identity were known you would be recognized as a paid RIAA employee ??
How do we know you’re not just an RIAA rep, or a Lawyer
You’re just a joke .. period
April 15th, 2007 at 11:28 pm
It’s now standard operation procedure for RIAA chills to remain anonymous!
see the latest post in Mr. B’s Blog
http://recordingindustryvspeople.blogspot.com/2007/04/wolfpack-stands-up-to-riaa-nc-state-to.html#7698446749002605923
__
Alter_Fritz
April 21st, 2007 at 4:42 pm
I despise lawyers more than you. However, there is a reason for legal language, and the more “plain” the document, the more room for error. Sorry, but that’s the way it is, because each party only knows what’s going on in their own mind, and what they think is obvious is the furthest thing from obvious to the other person.
You wouldn’t want your doctor naming things with generality, for each nerve does something specific, and they are not fungible (replaceable by another nerve). Similarly for much legal language. In my documents, I often use plain language examples to clarify the legalese, but I won’t remove the legalese because it serves a purpose. Other attorneys generally won’t spend the time to do what I do, but they sure appreciate it when they see it.
Hating lawyers is fine — they (we) deserve it. I went to law school because I was defrauded by a lawyer and was determined to never let that happen again. But, be sure you know *why* you hate them.
Jordan Glass (Patti Santangelo’s attorney)