Talking with an old friend the other day, something came up in conversation that I hadn’t considered before. We were talking about negative commentary on our blogs, of which she receives far more simply because she writes about extremely controversial subjects, and frankly, as much as I love this woman, she’s not altogether abundant with her diplomacy.
As we talked about how we handle negative comments, she laughed about how she occassionally edits commentary to reflect positively. This means that when someone says, “I hate you” she makes it read “I love you”.
Now… there has been plenty of discussion1 of editing comments for the purposes of cleaning up general mistakes or deleting comments when they go astray, but this is the first I’ve heard of someone actually — and quite literally — twisting one’s words. But it made me think.
What about copyright issues and comments?
Is this an issue at all even? Who owns the comment? My question is, if I post a comment on, say, a big news outlet blog, can that news outlet change my comment so I said something completely different? I’m not talking about fixing a spelling error; I’m talking about them changing my comment completely.
If I am the author of a comment, don’t I own the words?
But my comment is published on web space that is owned by someone else. What then?
Honestly, I’m not sure. I’m inclined to say the web site owner has the right to do whatever they want and it’s just a matter of decency not to edit comments in this way.
I’ve only ever had two strict commenting rules:
- Don’t be rude or disrespectful
- And use your real name2
To be fair, I’ve edited a small handful of comments in my time, maybe 3 or 4, and in all but one case, I was fixing genuine spelling or grammatical errors by people I knew wouldn’t normally make those mistakes and would appreciate the fixes.
The one other case was someone being annoying and using an alias. I tracked down their real name from a comment they left somewhere else and replaced their alias. This, I think I have the right to do as it doesn’t change the comment itself other than to add or remove credibility depending on who said it.
What do you think about editing commentary?
Post Script: Editing Yourself
I just had a thought about editing your own comments. I know this would help me as a commenter, but would be a nightmare as a blog owner. What of that? And I haven’t tried it, but does Wordpress allow logged in users to edit their own comments? If so, would it be worth registering with a blog to be able to edit your own comments (not just to leave a comment, but to edit)?
What about any content you publish elsewhere?
Someone pointed out a site to me and I wish I still had the url. This site was a place where you could publish your own stuff: photos, stories, etc. and it would all be shown in a sort of flip-book or magazine style layout with a “flash-like” interaction. It was slick, but I decided to read the terms.
Mixed in with all the standard stuff you’d expect, about not being vulgar or libelous, was a bit about how the moment you publish, ABC Company has the right to distribute, edit, publish and otherwise take ownership of your content. They really said that, though with more legal mumbo-jumbo to confuse you into thinking they didn’t.
I turned right around and headed for the hills, though I wish I could remember now so I could warn you. But, you should be reading terms for every site you contribute to anyway, right?
But if no terms are stated, what’s the default? Who owns content submitted and published to someone else’s web space?
Tanny O'Haley left a comment on April 26, 2008 at 1:01 pm | #
I think what you’ve done is appropriate, however your friend should not change the meaning of a comment. I use my real name and people can look up what I’ve written and it should represent what I’ve written (with your thoughtful fixing of my spelling errors so I look good), not what she has changed to to mean.
Maybe there should be a Hippocratic oath for Bloggers. Do no harm.
Jinny Valle left a comment on April 26, 2008 at 5:42 pm | #
I’m probably naive, but it never occurred to me that when I leave comments they may be changed. It makes me nervous about leaving comments at all, and especially using my real name. Then again, I guess anyone could use my name and leave a comment.
I have always felt like the comments I left were my intellectual property. I guess that may not be the case, but they did come out of my head…
It’s definitely something to think about in the future.
Ren Jonsin left a comment on April 27, 2008 at 8:04 am | #
Although I don’t have terms of service on my site for comment contributors, I do have a notice of what kind of comments will be deleted from the site; posts in all caps along with posts that only attack the writer or another commentor and do not contribute to the topic.
I’d never edit a comment to change meaning and if I caught a member of my editing staff doing so, they’d be removed from the editing staff. Not only is it unethical, but it also breaks the trust of anyone who might want to contribute thoughtful comments.
As far as using an alias, I don’t really care, most of the people that comment on my site use one and usually use the same one for all their posts. However, if I see a list of the same IP arguing with itself under different usernames, I usually remove that from public view.
I currently use Textpattern because after three years it is so easy to use, but I’m thinking of changing to Joomla so that I can have a built in solution for commentor registration. I know that there is a TXP plugin, but I’m not so much worried about malicious code, as I am someone losing interest in their plugin and not supporting it when there is a version change on the core product.
By the way, I LOVE your site, no need to edit there.
Scott Lenger left a comment on May 2, 2008 at 3:10 pm | #
A copyright begins as soon as a work is fixed in a tangible form, so once you hit submit it’s yours.
However, I believe the site/blog owner retains the copyright to the “collection” of comments, similar to the way you can license a collection of del.ici.ous links.
In the case of your friend’s example, there could possibly be a Fair Use Parody argument since she is certainly poking fun at the original comment.
Then, as you suggest, there is always the possibility of adding a TOS like facebook’s, “By posting User Content to any part of the Site, you automatically grant, and you represent and warrant that you have the right to grant, to the Company an irrevocable, perpetual, non-exclusive, transferable, fully paid, worldwide license (with the right to sublicense) to use, copy, publicly perform, publicly display, reformat, translate, excerpt (in whole or in part) and distribute such User Content for any purpose, commercial, advertising, or otherwise…“