That data thing again
This story from the BBC highlights the latest arguments that are raging over online information. Apparently, the Press Complaints Commission are to undertake consultation about whether newspapers should be able to re-print information that individuals have made available on sites like Facebook and MySpace.
The impetus for this seems to be that individuals who have seen their information re-used in newspaper stories about them are objecting; they say that this information is private and not for public consumption.
Which is crap. This isn’t (or shouldn’t be) a privacy issue - it’s a question of copyright. You’ve already made the information public by publishing it on a website; if it gets re-used by a newspaper then the best you can hope for is to sue them for infringement of your copyright - so if they re-publish your holiday snaps without your permission, you’ve got a case.
As far as privacy goes, if you don’t want people to know about something then don’t put it on a website. As I’ve said before (here and here), you’re just opening yourself up for trouble.
In a related story, you may have heard of the issues that are surrounding the “whistle-blowing” site, Wikileaks. Everyone seems to be up in arms because they’ve been closed down for making public some confidential documents owned by companies; this is being seen as stifling of freedom of speech. Um, no. What it is is stopping the illegal use of documents that are not owned (and may have been obtained illegally) by those people who are making them public. Freedom of speech is a great thing and if it’s being stifled then I’m ready to protest as loud as the next person - but that’s not what is happening here.
BBC goes Fisher Price
The BBC website is one of the stalwarts of the Net for me; its been my homepage for absolutely ages because of its easy access to news, sport, TV and the myriad other things that the BBC has to offer.
Today, they’ve relaunched the homepage of the site. Apparently its been in beta development for quite some time and this final version is the result of lots of testing and tweaking. As you’ll see from the comments left on the blog announcing the change, it is not universally loved.
For myself, I’m not a fan so far. It may grow on me over time, but at the moment it very much seems a backward step; while the various modules can be turned on and off - so theoretically allowing you to create “your” BBC page - the design overwhelms the content and you’re left having to search for what you want. Yes, technically it’s very good (someone must be very proud of their coding skills) but it is not as usable as the old style homepage.
And it’s only the homepage that has been changed so far, which means that the rest of the site maintains the look it had before. It seems a little pointless just to be changing one page and not the rest but perhaps that’s a blessing in disguise; it will give the BBC a chance to re-think the new look and, even if they don’t go back to the old version, at least improve it considerably before it’s rolled out across the whole site.
Young @ Heart
I’ve written before about the Young @ Heart Chorus, the ensemble who sing songs by the likes of the Clash, Ramones, Coldplay and Sonic Youth even though their average age is somewhere around 80. (If you haven’t already checked out their version of “Fix You”, then now would be a perfect time to go and download it.)
This post is just to give you a heads-up that the Walker/George documentary about the Chorus gets a cinematic release in the US and Canada in April, thanks to Fox Searchlight. If you get the chance to see it, make sure you do because it is one of the best documentaries you will ever see - but be prepared to shed a few tears along the way. Even though it is tinged with sadness, this is real feel-good storytelling that will leave you feeling spiritually and emotionally uplifted.
You can currently watch the trailer over at the Apple site, or via Fox Searchlight.
Another Wordpress plug-in
There are all sorts of Wordpress plug-ins out there; some make you wonder what the person who wrote it was thinking, others are indispensable, must-have pieces of code. Then there’s a third group, those ones that you look at and initially aren’t sure about but when you actually start using them you realise that they could be really good.
Such a one is WP Auctions, which basically lets you turn your blog into your very own eBay just by adding a widget to your sidebar. No fees to pay, so you can list as many items as you like as often as you like. If you’ve got a bunch of stuff cluttering up the garage, why not install WP Auctions and see what happens?
But it’s not just your unwanted clutter that you can offer on WP Auctions; why not offer your expertise to others? For instance, if you know a lot about CSS and web design, you could offer that to your readers. Or typing services. Or anything intangible that you know how to do and which other people would pay you for. The only limit is your morality (and perhaps the law…)
I’ve started using this widget today and there’s a couple of auctions running in the sidebar for you to check out.
On commenting
Over at This Time, This Space brightfeather has a post today about “Who owns blog comments?“. It’s a longish piece, but worth a read as it presents an interesting perspective on the various issues that surround electronic publishing.
Because I feel it is (at least in part) in response to discussions that have been going on at the Wolfs Howl Forum regarding editing of posts, I wanted to understand brightfeather’s position and see how it compared to mine. Whilst I can’t fault most of what she says, I think I do have to make a few observations of my own. Usually I would have done this as a comment on her blog, but as this is likely to be a long piece, I thought I better not take up all her webspace with it.
Firstly, I have to say that I agree with the basic theme of copyright protection - whatever you write (and however you publish it) belongs to you. No-one else has the right to edit, re-distribute or attribute your writing without your consent. There are those that argue that if your blog publishes a feed then you are asking people to re-distribute it; this is a specious argument that has no grounding in actual fact.
In line with that is the understanding that when you comment on a blog or a forum, no other user should have the right to edit what you have said - provided that what you have said does not contravene previously available guidelines about what is considered to be acceptable. Even if they do edit your post or comment to remove something that contravenes those guidelines (for example, if you’ve been racially abusive), they should include a note in the original comment to that effect.
But there are, I think, two other ideas up for discussion here as well. The first is control over what you’ve written. If it’s a post on your own blog, you never have to relinquish control because you can always edit it. If it’s a comment on someone else’s blog, you lose control the moment you click “Submit” and from then on it’s there for all the world to see whether you like it or not. Posting in a forum thread is different, though, because your ability to edit or delete your posts can vary from board to board.
For instance, at The Wolfs Howl, I’ve recently introduced a five hour limit on editing and deleting posts. I did this (after asking the opinion of other forum members, and after looking into the way other forums operate), because there were instances of posts being edited after they’d been replied to - which then changes the whole tone of the discussion. What I wanted to do was stop people editing or deleting posts after they’d been viewed or replied to, but the software doesn’t allow that so I’ve had to introduce time-limited editing.
The reason I wanted to stop this was because, to me, forum threads are conversations; they’re the electronic equivalent of having a chat with someone. In a conversation you may think carefully about what you say before you open your mouth (or you may not), but once you’ve said it that’s it; the words have been uttered. If you haven’t said it clearly, or if the other person misunderstands, then you have to say something else to clarify. You can’t go back and unsay your original words - they’re gone. Forum threads should be the same way.
The second idea up for discussion is that of reserving the right to change your mind. This, I would have thought, is a given - we all reserve that right, and the right to think differently from each other. I may have misunderstood, but what brightfeather seems to be saying is that because she may change her opinion on an issue at some point in the future, she must retain full control over her published words, wherever they may have been published, so that she can update them. Our whole lives are a continual learning process; today’s popular opinion may be tomorrow’s laughing stock. That shouldn’t prevent us from saying something today. But tomorrow, when we realise that we were wrong… just move on. No need to edit, just say “That was me yesterday, this is me today.”
Electronic publishing is perhaps more likely to throw our old opinions back at us, because of the way in which it hangs around waiting to be re-discovered when an old post gets re-read but what difference does that make? Yes they are your words, and yes you still own them - but that doesn’t mean you still have to believe what they say.
Update: After I published this entry yesterday, I got an email from brightfeather to let me know that I was wrong; her post was not about discussions we’d had over at The Wolfs Howl Forum but was triggered by what has gone on over the last few months at the Wordpress.com forums. So, sorry to brightfeather for getting the wrong end of the stick there. I expect that she’ll drop by herself to give us a fuller update in due course.
Wolfs Stuff
Wolfs Helpers
-
