Shooting at Bubbles

Bloggers can be an opinionated bunch. Whether it be about which computer is the best or which social network rules or whether we have the right to dictate where the conversation about our blog posts take place. While there is no argument over how we feel when our content gets ripped by scrapers and sploggers for their financial benefit we will bicker over where people can take the conversation. Some will even go as far as to delete accounts when they don’t like having the conversation away from their blogs.

Before the time of things like Twitter, FriendFeed and even Disqus we were pretty secure behind the walls of our blogs assured that anyone who started a conversation on a post was now your prisoner. Now though conversations have been freed to happen where ever they may and some find this loss of control disconcerting.

The discussion over this transfer of conversational control from the blogger to the commenter picked up today with several people expressing their viewpoints over the whole thing which started with a comment on FriendFeed by Robert Scoble late yesterday. In this comment Robert called Rob La Gesse out for deleting his FriendFeed account and thereby deleting any comments associated to his account; among which was Robert’s and so arose this discussion of who owns the comments made whether they be on your blog, FriendFeed or even Twitter.

Colin Walker wrote this morning that as far as FriendFeed was concerned this was going to have to be something they were going to have to deal with. Probably sooner than later. Colin pointed out that while it might be fine to delete your own posts and comments made on FriendFeed that shouldn’t mean that his comments get deleted as well. This might be all well and fine but really what kind of sense would any comments make if the impetus for those comments are removed. Sorry but that makes no sense to me.

Mathew Ingram quite rightly pointed out as well that maybe once you make those comments on a 3rd party site like FriendFeed they are no longer yours much like how Robert has argued that once he has posted on his blog it is no longer his – anyone remember his statement to bloggers – “your content is no longer yours”. How is this case of comments any different?

Cyndy over at Profy.com probably has the most sensible look at the whole thing as she asks

I’m sure that the bloggers in question aren’t too upset about it, since they didn’t like having the conversation there in the first place. But did they own the content of those comments? Conversations naturally fork; should they be deleted along with the accounts? As a blogger, I may not like having conversations everywhere, but I recognize that I don’t own any conversation. I don’t own what people say, and because I don’t own it, I can’t control it. But as we push this envelope into shapes unlike the traditional one, are we changing what intellectual property is and who has the rights to it?

The point is that we are all beginning to act like Gollum in The Lord of Rings thinking that anything we post to the internet; whether it be a blog post or a comment made somewhere else, belongs to us. Well I hate to be the cranky old fart to break to news to you but get over it because the moment you hit the publish or submit button your control ceases to exist.

It took me quite some time to come to grips with that myself as I believed that I owned my words and that should be respected. Well the fact that people might end up talking about a post on FriendFeed or even on your blog doesn’t mean that your words or thoughts aren’t being respected. In fact it is if anything the exact opposite – after all they are talking about your thoughts, ideas or opinions aren’t they?

And if for some reason some person decides that they don’t want to play anymore and some comment of yours goes missing – don’t worry so much you’ll be able to make plenty more. That is the preciousness of words and thoughts – they come easily and are freely given.