When Blogs attack...
Recent readings have been portraying blogs and blogging itself in a fairly skeptical light. A lot of questions about ethics, ideas reaching the wrong audience, cyber-stalking, religiously provoking posts, etcetera have been filling in the news media.
While the idea of blogging was a revolutionary one to me, to share ideas, get opinions and set it as a stage to improve on my photography, I was one of the late bloomers. But hey, for an amateur, arenas like Blogspot is a golden stage...It's free. Many have been blogging ever since the internet became a public media, evolving continually into growing trends...For many it is a media to express opinions, not just a virtual diary. Opinions that might be as controversial as they are true.
In the present high-tech world, living without the 0s and 1s is unimaginable. With its growth at lightspeed, law and order is trying to catch up too, but just not as fast. Blogs certainly fall under the first amendment (Freedom of Speech and Press in India). But how much and when can/ should law interfere?
A headline in India...The Department of Telecommunications (DoT) sent a memo to ISPs ordering it to ban access to certain blogs, that were controversial in nature. (Now remember, this is a country where some states went against the Supreme Court and banned the release of The Da Vinci Code). Now the ISPs took the liberty to block whole domains. For 48 hours blogger.com, Typepad, Yahoo! Geocities, were not accessible in India. This sounded like something that would happen in China, with the Government blocking users' access to websites and information that is open to the rest of the world!
Now back to the apparent 'free'world. This one English woman living in France is a very Bridget Jones kind of a blogger (La Petite Anglaise). A very creative writer who has her book ideas in the oven. A few months back, she was fired from her job, after her blogger anonymity was outed and her Boss was just outraged of her reference to him and the company (neither identities revealed in the 2 years of the blog's life), condemned her actions as 'gross misconduct' and fired her!
As much as it outrages me, I am kind of happy for her. She has got a legal case going against her former company, all the publicity she needed (not that she had it already), maybe a book deal, and she'll be ready in no time to welcome a whole new life. Goodluck to her!
So who'll it be next. One of my favorite blogs (The Company Bitch) from my present home country is typing similar pages...What with a 'perky' colleague, a lousy boss who might be sexually harassing his employees, a boyfriend who becomes an ex-boyfriend and then becomes a re-boyfriend, and ofcourse the very 'Sex and the City' New York life!
But with so much scrutiny on blogs and bloggers, I hope nothing brutal happens to this 'Company Bitch' as happened to 'La Petite Anglaise'.
Now changing hats...Do bloggers really cross the line, relying too much on their cyber anonymity. Is what Gil Schwartz so elegantly put forth as Stanley Bing setting a wrong example or did it open venues for many?
While the idea of blogging was a revolutionary one to me, to share ideas, get opinions and set it as a stage to improve on my photography, I was one of the late bloomers. But hey, for an amateur, arenas like Blogspot is a golden stage...It's free. Many have been blogging ever since the internet became a public media, evolving continually into growing trends...For many it is a media to express opinions, not just a virtual diary. Opinions that might be as controversial as they are true.
In the present high-tech world, living without the 0s and 1s is unimaginable. With its growth at lightspeed, law and order is trying to catch up too, but just not as fast. Blogs certainly fall under the first amendment (Freedom of Speech and Press in India). But how much and when can/ should law interfere?
A headline in India...The Department of Telecommunications (DoT) sent a memo to ISPs ordering it to ban access to certain blogs, that were controversial in nature. (Now remember, this is a country where some states went against the Supreme Court and banned the release of The Da Vinci Code). Now the ISPs took the liberty to block whole domains. For 48 hours blogger.com, Typepad, Yahoo! Geocities, were not accessible in India. This sounded like something that would happen in China, with the Government blocking users' access to websites and information that is open to the rest of the world!
Now back to the apparent 'free'world. This one English woman living in France is a very Bridget Jones kind of a blogger (La Petite Anglaise). A very creative writer who has her book ideas in the oven. A few months back, she was fired from her job, after her blogger anonymity was outed and her Boss was just outraged of her reference to him and the company (neither identities revealed in the 2 years of the blog's life), condemned her actions as 'gross misconduct' and fired her!
As much as it outrages me, I am kind of happy for her. She has got a legal case going against her former company, all the publicity she needed (not that she had it already), maybe a book deal, and she'll be ready in no time to welcome a whole new life. Goodluck to her!
So who'll it be next. One of my favorite blogs (The Company Bitch) from my present home country is typing similar pages...What with a 'perky' colleague, a lousy boss who might be sexually harassing his employees, a boyfriend who becomes an ex-boyfriend and then becomes a re-boyfriend, and ofcourse the very 'Sex and the City' New York life!
But with so much scrutiny on blogs and bloggers, I hope nothing brutal happens to this 'Company Bitch' as happened to 'La Petite Anglaise'.
Now changing hats...Do bloggers really cross the line, relying too much on their cyber anonymity. Is what Gil Schwartz so elegantly put forth as Stanley Bing setting a wrong example or did it open venues for many?
