There are 70 million bloggers. We can’t force them all to be civil, argues linton chiswick |
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When technology writer and influential blogger Kathy Sierra decided to make public the online sexual harassment and death-threats that kept her from speaking at last month's ETech Conference, she not only shone a light into the darker corners of the blogosphere, she reignited a debate about responsibility, freedom of expression and the web.
This week, YouTube is under attack by Education Secretary Alan Johnson for failing to take action against cyber-bullying by schoolchildren - not just of other pupils, but teachers too. And today, The First Post reveals that Islamist insurgents are using a Google-hosted blog to celebrate British and American casualties in Iraq.
It's against this background that a mooted Bloggers' Code of Conduct is creating the biggest online argument of all - an argument |
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The current call to tame the web has come from tech publisher and blogger
Tim O’Reilly |
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about the very right to argue, anonymously if necessary, and without censorship.
The internet's short history is littered with cack-handed attempts to control it, usually triggered by fear and a failure to grasp the immensity of a publishing platform that - in an age of powerful governments and even more powerful corporations - transcends national boundaries and corporate ownership. But the current call to tame the web's Wild West comes from celebrated tech publisher and blogger Tim O'Reilly (left).
His Bloggers' Code of Conduct is a voluntary set of minimum standards encouraging bloggers to accept moral responsibility for their readers' comments, to resolve conflicts 'offline', to forward any overt threats to relevant legal authorities and to ban anonymous comments.
Even among Kathy Sierra's most vocal sympathisers, many of whom have recently attacked destructive elements in the blogging world, there's a great deal of discomfort about the O'Reilly code.
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