Weblog Ethics [0215.1999]

Don't encourage 'em.

Earlier today, I found a link on Jorn Barger's Robot Wisdom Weblog pointing to a site containing the complete text of several Douglas Adams novels.

I like the idea of free books. I actually read books from Project Gutenberg. Heck, I put my own novella (however poorly written) online. But I also believe that an author has a right to choose.

Figuring that if the novels were legit, and "public domain" as the webmaster claimed, you could get them from the official Douglas Adams website, I went looking, and found nothing.

So I sent an email to both Douglas Adams, and the site's webmaster, asking whether they thought the site was legal. (I just sent these messages, so I don't know whether or not I'll get a response).

I almost posted a link to the site, both in this article, and in my weblog. But I didn't. Why encourage people to use a site that I find unethical? And why encourage the site owner by sending traffic his way?

A journalist's dilemma

On the one hand, the public has a right to know what goes on in the world, and as a provider of information, I feel an obligation to tell the whole story. On the other hand, inforrmation can be dangerous in the wrong hands.

In this particular case, I link to a site, and people get to see electronic copies of some books they can read for free at the library anyway. So what? But it brings up some more general questions.

Are presurfers journalists? Or rather, do we need something like the notion of ethics in journalism?

When Wired covered the ::$DATA ASP exploit, they gave people everything they needed to know to remove -- or take advantage of -- the security hole. That makes sense to me. The system administrators of the world needed to know. (Besides, I'm sure l0pht Heavy Industries or something like it had it first)..

But are there things we shouldn't link to?

Jorn has a poll about R-Rated material on his weblog. He asked readers whether they would mind the occaisional link to a specific celebrity nude site. The majority so far (86%) either doesn't care, or responded favorably. Obviously, this part of the web community isn't phased by smut.

When Matt Drudge went live with the Monica Lewinksi scandal, he posted a story that Newsweek had decided to cover up. (see Brill's Content, Nov. 1998) I can only guess that Newsweek figured the story would do more harm than good, and that Drudge considered the people's right to know or his chance to break the story more important.

I wonder about that. I don't have an answer. I need to think about this some more.

Ethics in Journalism 101 .. dot com

I can only imagine what this means for the future of the journalism. If Rush can draw a crowd, well.. So can anyone.

I can easily imagine weblogs, or something like to be the next major form of journalism. Writers won't need magazines or publishers to support them, when they can hook up with an ad company like Flycast, or simply sell ads themselves...

If I taught a journalism class, I'd make everyone start a weblog. Students would have to track their story's progress online, write and check their story, and attract an audience.

It seems to me, that if you've got an interesting enough story on the web, all you have to do is ask questions in the right kinds of places, and the traffic will come.

That's a pretty powerful thought, but it's exactly what the web is all about. Be interesting. Get the word out. People will come.

Well, by design or accident, some of us are doing this now. Maybe we haven't hit on a big story yet. Maybe none of us have connected the dots between other stories and uncovered something huge.. Yet. But it's coming. I wonder if we're ready.