Regulate bloggers? Good luck

A blogswarm is never a pretty sight so I almost feel sorry for Tim Toulmin, the Director of the Press Complaints Commission. He argued that blogs ought to sign up to a voluntary code of conduct. Here's some of the savaging:

The always entertaining Mr Devil's Kitchen (possibly the foulest-mouthed of the bloggers) says this:

We bloggers regulate ourselves. If a blogger has misrepresented the facts, he or she is very often taken to task by their own commenters as well as by other bloggers. We nasty, rumour-mongering bloggers sink or swim by our credibility which is, in turn, determined by our reliability on evidence and interpretation.

Chicken Yoghurt agrees:

The laws of libel and contempt of court apply to bloggers as much as they do to journalists. Unlike newspapers who only admit to mistakes when what laughingly passes for PCC sanction is applied, blogging is a peer-reviewed medium where factual inaccuracies in post can be pointed out in the comments. It’s already self-policing. The best bloggers already unspokenly adhere to a code. Only the lowest of the low delete comments pointing out their mistakes and that kind of censorship tends to get flagged anyway.

Guido Fawkes weighs in with this:

There is not a hope in hell that this blog would ever comply with an imposed code of conduct. How would it even be enforced? If anyone tries to close this blog down in the U.S. where it is hosted (despite first amendment protections of the U.S. constitution) it would be mirrored in minutes in a second jurisdiction. What would they do, cut off the internet?

The blogosphere is what happens when people are left to their own devices - it is often cantankerous, sometimes stupid and hysterical. But hey, that's humankind for you. But in the end sanity triumphs and truth outs. The blogworld doesn't need codes of conduct and regulation because human societies, when free, have a natural tendency to what a clever Austrian called spontaneous order.

It would be hilarious though for the State to give regulation a go, just to watch the mauling and the quickest u-turn in history.

Robbie Millen

Comments

[Bryan Appleyard]

'Spontaneous order' has a misleadingly comforting sound. It could mean a continuous - though orderly - war of all against all. Hayek assumed too much for perfectly good reasons. But we shouldn't be hynotised by smart slogans.

[student]

I've just observed an example which might support the author's argument. Ten minutes ago there was an article in Guardian by David Clark about Litvinenko, FSB and this sort of rubbish (at http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/index.html) If you check it now you'll see it is missing with all the comments (it was 4th or 5th from the top). I wonder is it a regular practice or the author has been ashamed of his writing or the comments.

By the way, when some neocon is preaching his ideas here in "The Times", its usually difficult to post any comments there. Allowing authors to moderate the comments is not really that brilliant idea

[Disillusioned]

Join the campaign for a Voluntary Code Free Zone at http://disillusionedandbored.blogspot.com

[Robert]

Edinburgh based blog 'The Select Society' has an excellent analysis of why blogs already offer a better system of redress and regulation than the newspapers and TV.

http://www.theselectsociety.com/blog/?p=103

[David Gillies]

The blogosphere is anathema to top-down, centralising bureaucrats like this Toulmin fellow. It is almost a laboratory example of order spontaneously arising. Bloggers adhere to a rigid code of conduct if they wish to survive, a code no less rigid for not having been written. From a Hayekian perspective, this is only to be expected: internalised, social laws beat explicit, visible ones. The unwritten code is very potent:

NOW this is the Law of the Jungle—as old and as true as the sky;
And the Blogger that keep it may prosper, but the Blogger that break it must die.

It's not surprising to see that Brian Appleyard finds this less comforting than I do.

[Alan Connor]

All hail the Devils Kitchen... not many are worthy...

[Dr John Crippen]

A wise legislator never passes a law that is unenforceable. To do so merely brings the law into contempt. Even if, which (as the lawyers would say) is denied, regulation of the internet were desirable, it is simply not possible. But there are controls. The law of defamation applies to bloggers just like everyone else. And as has just been convincingly demonstrated (see http://nhsblogdoc.blogspot.com/2006/11/shameful-failed-cover-up-by-bbc.html) once something is published on the net, you cannot take it back. So you libel someone on the net at your peril.

Dr John Crippen

[Cleanthes]

Robbie,

You've got a good haul of the great and good in the blogosphere in the comments here. A cracking post.

There is much to deal with beyond the simple spontaneous order, especially with regard to the use of pseudonyms (and you've got me, Dr Crippen, Mr E and DK in this thread alone...) and even anonymity, but in general, offensive anonymous comments are almost always deleted by blog owners, where pseudonymous ones are not - they can be held against the reputation of the holder/user of that pseudonym.

Cleanthes

[Mr Eugenides]

Actually I don't think I was in the thread, Cleanthes, but as you say there is a difference between pseudonymity and anonymity in blogging - I am held accountable for what I write even though most readers don't actually know who I am.

[TramadoL40833]

I've just been staying at home waiting for something to happen. Whatever. Not much on my mind lately. I guess it doesn't bother me.