Comments for Who Owns All These Comments? You? Us? Someone Else?

Who Owns All These Comments? You? Us? Someone Else?

2008-05-29T15:35:01Z

Hank Williams relates a story about one of Robert Scoble's comments on FriendFeed being deleted after the author of the blog post he was commenting one removed his FriendFeed account. While the cynical response might be, "So one of the ten million comments Scoble leaves each day was delete -- he'll live," it does bring up a valid point about content ownership. The blog owner was upset that his the discussion around his content was taking place outside of his blog, while Scoble was upset that content he created (and thus should own -- right?) was removed without his permission. On an increasingly fragmented social web, who owns your comments?

]]> Whenever someone leaves a comment on this blog, I think the assumption is that while we may not own the comment itself (we won't try to stop you from posting it elsewhere), we at least have been granted full publishing rights to use it as we please. We've always reserved the right to republish comments in other posts (with attribution), as well as remove comments we felt were offensive or inappropriate.

But what if that comment is posted to FriendFeed or Digg? Now who owns it? Clearly, we have a lot less control over comments off of our web site, but should we be granted any rights to those comments at all? If the same comment had been made on the blog itself, we'd have probably looked at it as something we had full publishing rights to. Now that the comment is elsewhere, that's less clear.

Wiliams also points out that hosted comment services, such as Disqus, muddy the issue further. Blogs using that type of system are only really republishing comments made to specialized comment aggregation pages on a third party service. It's almost like publishing a feed of comments from Digg or FriendFeed. Commenters are generally given far more control over their comment when using Disqus than when using a built-in blog comment system. Systems like CoComment and Commentful that pull your comment stream into a single database similarly make things more complicated. Clearly, the idea there is that the commenter should be in full control of his or her comments.

"Since no blog platforms that I am aware of provide a mechanism for clarifying comment ownership rights, it seems to me that at best this issue is legally unclear, and at worst the site owner might only have the right to use and display the content in the very specific context in which the user placed the comment," writes Williams. "So if, for example the blog owner wanted to use the comment on another site, or to reconfigure his blog in some substantial way, that might, theoretically require the permission of the commenter."

This is an important issue, and as a commenter on Williams' blog notes, it has implications about liability as well. If I slander someone on your blog, and you're claiming ownership of my comment, where does the liability lie? What do you think? Who owns your comments? Does it matter where you leave them? We plan to sell the best comments on eBay and pocket all the profits (kidding!).

Comment from Todd on 2008-05-29

2008-05-29T16:20:28Z

I think automatically applies Public Domain licensing to all user generated content, as it should be.

( From bottom of Digg homepage )"...© Digg Inc. 2008 — Content posted by Digg users is dedicated to the public domain. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/publicdomain/"

Can the same be said for Read / Write Web? If me and the vice president fight it out in comments and tons of people start hitting that page to read the war of words causing a bug spike in advertising clicks - do I get some of that action?

Comment from Rob La Gesse on 2008-05-29

2008-05-29T16:43:51Z

As the author of said blog post, and the person who removed my feeds from FriendFeed, I just wanted to clarify a couple of points. First, I was NOT upset that there as a conversation about my post happening outside my blog. I just told Scoble that MY conversation about my post would take place on my blog, and not where he wanted me to have that conversation.

Second, I did not delete the associated comments on FF (in fact, they were not even deleted). When I removed my feeds (but not my FF account) I got no warning about anything being deleted/removed/hidden, whatever - except for what I fed FriendFeed. So once the feed was gone, the context of those comments was no longer available - FF just had no mechanism to display those orphaned comments. But they are still in the FF database (according to FF).

Thanks,

Rob

Comment from Josh Catone on 2008-05-29

2008-05-29T16:54:18Z

@Rob: Thanks for the clarification. I think the larger issue is still valid, though. Would love to hear your thoughts on the issue.

Also, this thread really speaks to your parallel concern about the fragmentation of blog comments. Take a look at these three passages:

"The blog owner was upset that his the discussion around his content was taking place outside of his blog ..." (RWW)

"He decided that he didn’t like the fact that comments about his blog posts were occurring on FriendFeed ..." (Matt Ingram)

"La Gesse did not like the fact that Scoble did not comment directly on his blog ..." (Hank Williams)

According to your comment here, none of those statements is precisely accurate, but in order to correct them, you'd have to 1. monitor every blog that writes about your post and 2. visit each blog and comment separately.

Could it be that fragmentation of blog comments has been happening long before Digg and FriendFeed due to the way bloggers have always linked to one another and responded in separate posts? (This isn't really the topic of my post, but a semi-related thought I had this morning and one that I think this actually illustrates well.)

Comment from Rob La Gesse on 2008-05-29

2008-05-29T17:23:19Z

Josh - Any blog that linked back to my initial post, and showed as a Trackback, I have done as you suggested - I went and left a comment, just as I did here, that clarifies any inaccuracies.

FriendFeed is scheduled to be on The Gillmor Gang tomorrow. And since Scoble is a member of the Gang, I expect him on as well. I am unsure if Steve will invite me, but if they are discussing this issue, I would be glad to join.

As far as the fragmenting of conversations - Twitter is already pretty effective at doing that, and I love Twitter. So fundamentally I don;t have any issue with someone having a conversation about my blog on a different platform. But if they expect me to deeply engage in a conversation about a blog post of mine, then they will have to come to my blog.

At least blogs send Trackbacks, so I know where the conversation is taking place. The only way to know someone on FriendFeed is talking about you is to go to FF, or to monitor your traffic sources closely (as far as I know. Since I never really used FF, so I am not sure).

But as far as who owns the comments? The Terms of Use on my blog makes it very clear what my feelings about that are, as far as comments left on my blog are concerned:

"This blog, and everything on it, including comments are my property. Once you leave a comment, you have left it. It then belongs to me."

I have no idea about the legality of that statement, but it does let my readers know what my feelings are on the subject. That ToU policy has been in place for nearly two years.

Do I think I "own" this comment here? Absolutely not. If you delete it, would it bother me? Absolutely not. I might not come back, and might really be reluctant to leave another comment. But publisher's make decisions. And if they make too many decisions that piss off readers, they lose readers.

In this case, it was an immature platform (FF) that (based on their own admission) just had not contemplated what would happen if someone removed their feed.

Thanks,

Rob

Comment from Meryn Stol on 2008-05-29

2008-05-29T17:25:24Z

I think the question of ethical handling of comments is more important. There will probably will always be one or more parties who are able to delete or change a comment (applies to any piece of data basically...) the question is how people should handle this capability. Just because you can, doesn't mean your entitled to it. And just because users might have signed away all their rights, doesn't mean they'll gonna ignore you if you don't respect the rights they think they should have.

Comment from Brianne Pruitt on 2008-05-29

2008-05-29T17:46:43Z

As someone who moderates comments on my newspaper's Web site, the ethical concerns are central. We will remove any comment that is libelous, defamatory, or in any other way a personal attack.

Why? Because, as a news organization, we are aware of the legal ramifications for publishing such things, and since comments are on our Web site, we are, in essence, publishing them. If I own a comment once it's posted, I am then also liable for that comment.

So, be wary of the content of comments, because it could, in the end, come back to bite you!

Comment from rick on 2008-05-29

2008-05-29T17:49:15Z

I'm not sure 'own' is a useful metaphor for something like comments. But if you have a comment policy at all you're certainly asserting rights of comments including the right to delete the comment entirely. If a particular site wanted to clarify the rights of themselves and the commenters they could do this in such a policy. As a practical matter, I assume that the site gets full rights to the comments I make and that I have no rights really (though perhaps that's simply because I have no practical way to affect a comment once it's submitted.)

The FF issue is intriguing though and you might want to check out Fred Wilson's post "Web Discussions: Leaving The Instigator Out" yesterday on a similar issue. FF and similar services that suck your content in and then provide ways to discuss it on their site should really provide a way to have that discussion reflected back to your site.

Comment from Michael Beck on 2008-05-29

2008-05-29T17:57:43Z

Comments are essentially a reaction to a story. You can dress it up as "a conversation" or whatever fuzzy name you want to give them, but they are still a reaction to a story.

When you write a letter to an editor of a newspaper, are you concerned with what that paper will do with YOUR letter? No, because it's understood that your letter is intended to be printed in the paper and archived in perpetuity (the content, not the actual physical letter itself, even if you used cute stationary.)

For anyone to assert that they retain ownership over a comment left in reaction to someone else's thread, blog, or forum post is ridiculous.

And in response to Robert Scoble's self-righteous "how dare he delete my stuff" rant, Scoble contradicted himself in the course of the same evening: "Chris: actually the person who started the comment cluster does "own" the cluster. For instance, you are commenting on my cluster here. I can delete your comment. I could also delete the whole cluster including everyone's comments on it. I've already deleted one comment to remove spam. This is like you are commenting on my blog and I have the same rights there." (Source, FriendFeed: http://friendfeed.com/e/e4fa4693-b6c8-4f72-a9d2-f919e708e767 )

Comment from impl.emented.com on 2008-05-29

2008-05-29T18:41:24Z

An interesting subject that urged me to comment. Here some random thoughts:

If you write a comment, I think you own it in the same way as you own the content of a blog post you write (assuming you post it publicly, provide a feed etc.) That is, others, including the site owner, has the right to link to it, publish an excerpt, or even republish the whole comment, as long as he or she gives proper attribution and does not change the wording of the comment.

If you intend to republish the comment to monetize it in a direct manner, like selling a book, maybe you should ask for permission if the comment is significant in terms of length and/or originality.

Since the comment lives on someone else's site, the site owner has the right to remove it if it's offensive, breaks some law, is spammy etc. But here it becomes interesting where to draw the line of what's ok and what's not. Should you allow comments that are only insignificantly related to the subject of the post, is clearly intended to just promote some other content, or maybe seems to be relevant, but is just cleverly disguised to promote something else?

I think that you should be cautious in removing comments that are not clearly spam, unless you explicitly state on your blog or site that certain types of comments will be removed. Otherwise, if you remove some legitimate comment, you effectivly practice censorship, and could (or should) be publicly blamed.

My two cents, perhaps slightly off topic, let's see if it gets removed.
/Jonas

This comment is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 Unported License. :-D

Comment from Thiago Freire on 2008-05-29

2008-05-29T19:17:57Z

Big comments here! My opinion is simple:

Comments license: Public Domain.
Blog owner can delete posts: Yes, but is not a cool thing :(

Comment from Hank Williams on 2008-05-29

2008-05-29T21:13:02Z

Josh,

Great read! Thanks for the coverage.

Comment from Marcin Grodzicki on 2008-05-29

2008-05-30T00:02:19Z

I guess the bloggers are finaly starting to feel me0dia companies pain - everyone wants to own (and be paid for their work. Figure out a business model for that :)

Comment from Morgan on 2008-05-29

2008-05-30T00:40:56Z

To be upset that someone else is not as careful with your comments as you might be is just stupid. Mr. Scoble could have saved his comments anywhere he wanted and posted them wherever else he wanted.

It's totally up to the site owner, the person that pays for the hosting and the storage and the maintenance and everything else what stays or goes on their site. If Mr. Scoble doesn't like it, he can obviously pound sand.

To say, however, that some site has an obligation to preserve his comments is just ridiculous. You can 'own' a car as much as you like, but leaving it on my lawn, even if invited, does not obligate me to store it there in perpetuity. I can change my mind whenever.

My prediction? This whole line of 'ownership' debate will get much more annoying, with the idea of ownership conveying zero responsibility of the 'owner' and about a million different obligations on everyone else.

Comment from Michael on 2008-05-29

2008-05-30T00:50:37Z

I believe that the creator of the comment is the owner of it. The only problem is that the (in my view) owner doesn't usually have a copy of it, the blog owner has the copy of it. Comments are strange and I think things like Disqus are going to make it easier for people to understand who owns what.

Comment from Daniel Ha on 2008-05-29

2008-05-30T02:18:44Z

@Michael,

Absolutely. I'm going to put out a new blog post pretty soon that addresses this.

@Hank,

Very good read. Thanks for bringing this important issue to everyone's attention.

Comment from gregory on 2008-05-29

2008-05-30T03:38:49Z

it is an illusion that we own anything ... not our body, not our thoughts, we are temporary curators, with the privacy of the ostrich with its head in the sand ...

can you control the thoughts that come into your mind? same with the web. ownership is anyway a western idea, and not as useful for the species as we might suppose.

when there is full global participation in the web, not so far away, this question will be seen to be a wrong question.

does a cell own its input into the greater metabolic system? hardly.

something else is going to happen

Comment from John E on 2008-05-29

2008-05-30T04:37:32Z

What about sites that resell comments in book form? For example, PostSecret? Scott Adam's Dilbert blog?

Personally I don't presume my (usually inane) comments have any commercial value whatsoever, but it doesn't seem right. Apparently it must be technically legal.

Comment from Anton Mochalin on 2008-05-29

2008-05-30T06:54:04Z

This topic shows once again that anyone bothering too much about intellectual property will always be a little bit too confused. Information is processed, changed and transmitted in many unexpected ways and will always be and people trying to set any limitations / prohibitions to that are fighting against one of the most fundamental processes in human life.

You can own the server where some comment is stored. In this case you can do anything with that unit of storage - delete, modify, whatever. You can allow it to be served to one party and prohibit it being served to another. That's your only freedom and responsibility regarding information - do whatever you think is good with the information you store and process and provide. If anyone alse has that same information - the only thing you can try to do is simply come to some agreement.

Comment from Blackblade on 2008-05-30

2008-05-30T07:02:36Z

At coComment we have taken the approach that if the site where the comment is posted, as part of its Terms of Service, asserts ownership then we are not in a position to ignore that and therefore the ownership vests with them.

If there are no Terms of Service or they make no claim to the posted comments then, by default, we assign the IP of the comments to the commenter. That means that he/she can ask us to remove it from our database and we will do so.

Where it can get tricky is if the blog/site deletes the comments ... we don't, by default, also do so. Therefore that comment will still exist in coComment, attributed to the site where it was first made, although it no longer exists there.

All comments gratefully received :-)

Comment from The Mantari on 2008-05-30

2008-05-30T14:19:53Z

The answer is being simple. If someone is being sued, then the website is more than happy to let the submitted of the comment be the owner. If someone is trying to make money, then the website is more than happy to claim ownership.

Glad I could clear this up for you.

Comment from elpollo on 2008-05-30

2008-05-30T14:59:16Z

Blackblade's cocomment solution seems like a perfect fit here. To avoid censorship you can have your comments tracked by services like cocomment, and regardless of what happens at the original blog it will still be available for others to read.
As for this particular controversy, even if I don't agree with the blog owner censorship policy, he is the owner and can do what he wants, it will probably backfire, as we are seeing now, but he owns the "space".

Comment from Rob La Gesse on 2008-05-30

2008-05-30T18:24:16Z

@elpollo - Perhaps you should actually read a little bit about this before you comment on it. I have no "censorship policy". I didn't delete any comments revolving around this conversation. The only comments I have ever deleted on my blog were spam, or when the person who left the comment asked me to.

Nobody was censored.

This conversation has nothing to do with censorship - it has to do with where a conversation started, where I wanted to continue to be involved in that conversation, and the fact that FriendFeed did not think through the eventuality that someone might actually remove their feed.

Comment from Peat Bakke on 2008-05-30

2008-05-30T19:39:24Z

What seems to be missing from the blogger-commenter relationship is a common language for describing ownership, capabilities, and responsibilities.

Creative Commons solved this problem for content publishers. The beauty of the CC system is that it provides a common framework for describing and understanding usage rights -- it's descriptive, not prescriptive.

I'd love to see something similar for blogs. If I could put a couple of small badges in the comment area on my site, visitors could know exactly what to expect and choose whether or not they want to participate.

Comment from Lawrence Salberg on 2008-05-31

2008-05-31T08:51:21Z

The issue is still valid? Did you bother to contact the parties and attempt to get the real scoop before bothering your 17,000 subscribers with this? No.

Did you bother to have your article proofread and the typos eliminated before publishing it? No.

Strikes me that a website with a Compete rank of near 5,000 ought to do a better job of screening their own posts, rather than worrying about who owns what comments where.

As for this comment, it's all yours. Delete it or eat it for breakfast.