Kathy Sierra death threats are no basis for blogger code of conduct

Kathy Sierra, a prominent blogger, has received what she sees as death threats from other bloggers-- and takes them seriously enough to cancel speaking engagements and call on law enforcement. If you aren't already familiar with the story, I urge you to visit her post, which has attracted 1000+ comments in just a few days. But carry a strong stomach -- this is seriously ugly, offensive, putrid stuff. That some of the offenders -- or facilitators -- may include other famous bloggers simply makes the story worse. I am deliberately not linking to the alleged offenders/facilitators because, quite literally, this is a case for the police.

But the inevitable calls for blogger codes of conduct miss the mark. Tim O'Reilly calls for one in a BBC interview, but with tens of millions of bloggers, in every country, he's farting in a hurricane. No code of conduct will ever be agreeable to all bloggers -- 99% will never hear of the topic, anyway -- and no code would ever be enforceable.

I posted a Code of Blogging Ethics more than two years ago. That code gets a lot of traffic, and I hear, from time to time, that it inspires new bloggers. But I am particularly happy most read why I posted it. In it, I argue that any "code of blogging ethics" is pretty much a contract between the blogger and the reader -- enforceable by the reader's very powerful tool of dismissing the blog on the spot.

At the time, I quoted Jeff Jarvis:

"We don't need a committee. We don't need an authority figure or moral guidepost.

"This is a distributed world, a world owned by the whole. We are ruled by the wisdom of the crowd."

To that, I would add we are also ruled by law, another application of the wisdom of the crowd.

The alleged offenses against Kathy are already covered by law, if they did happen. If I threaten to kill someone on this blog, Danish law is way ahead of any blogging code of conduct. If I let a comment threatening the same stand, the law is ready for me. If I encourage, tacitly or not, an environment where threats are made, the law is ready for me. The possible sanctions of the blogosphere pales in comparison.

For that very reason, supporters of a collective blogger code of conduct overreach. You can legislate, set rules, set standards only in a closed group -- the sanction being punishment by the group or exclusion from it. The blogosphere hasn't the ability and never will.

The sort of thing Kathy reports is disgusting. But there is law in place to punish it, if true, which is something no code of blogging conduct could ever do.

Technorati : allan jenkins, code of blogging ethics, code of conduct, desirable roasted coffee, kathy sierra, online death threats

Posted by Allan Jenkins on March 28, 2007 at 07:37 PM in Blogging, Desirable Roasted Coffee, Ethics, Law | Permalink

Comments

Interesting point, Allan. I was just commenting on another blog that we need to do a better job of self-policing, otherwise someone else will step in and do it for us, but perhaps self-policing (under the guise of a Code of Conduct or something else) will not be sufficient on a broad scale, if only because the online community is comprised of many different groups and subgroups. Certainly having the legal system to fall back on is a good thing, especially in extreme cases, but what lies between "do nothing" and going the legal route? Unfortunately I don't have the answer.

Posted by: Andrea Weckerle | Mar 28, 2007 8:27:09 PM

Surely all this means is that whatever our high ideals, in fact the blogosphere is just like the real world. We hope that venal idiots won't self-select, but sadly it appears that they do.

That's the trouble with free speech. cf Voltaire.

Posted by: Martin Ross | Mar 30, 2007 10:59:57 AM

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