Who Owns Comments?
I noticed this over at WLTC, and figured I’d like to post something about it. I seem to have eventually gotten around to it.
Would most of you agree that when you post a comment on a blog, you still own your comment, but you give the blogger the universal, irrevocable right to reproduce, distribute, and edit the comment for clarity, no strings attached?
That’s How It’s Always Been
For me, I’ve always assumed, since it’s what I’ve seen that people do on other sites, that that’s the case, and that’s how I’ve operated. People that are kind enough to post comments on my site still own what they say. I mean, obviously, you know, I can’t own their words. But if they use horrid spelling I have the right to edit what they say to be in somewhat readable format, yeah? I’ve never thought it would be necessary to post more of a commenting policy than a slightly more detailed explanation of “Please don’t be a jerk.”
Maybe I Should…
After reading that post, I started thinking that maybe I should add a bit to my existing Commenting Policy1 about who exactly owns the comments here, and what I as the site owner am allowed to and will do with them, and what you as the commenter are allowed to do once they’re published.
Just What IS My Opinion Anyway?
However, that raises questions for me. What do I think about all this? Well, obviously, I believe the commenter still owns their words. I’ve always thought that I’ve got the right to edit for clarity what they’re saying if they have a bad case of “Can’t Spell for Beans” or an epic potty mouth, or have messy HTML, or accidentally fudged their URL or something. I believe that I don’t have the right to literally change what they say, or claim that what they said are my own words. That’s wrong, and I’ll never do it. It’s all too easy to link to a comment and give credit where it’s due.
What You Can Do About It: Not Much
As for the fact that each commenter owns their comments, there’s not much action that entitles them to. If a commenter asked me nicely to fix their spelling or delete their comment, I would. However, when there’s the question of deletion, most people are “flaming” or being right jerks anyway, and their commenter’s rights are immediately revoked for any offending comments. So, basically, they could ask me to destroy the record of what they said on my site if they felt that it was damaging to their reputation, but I could feel that what they’ve said is too important or outright stupid to delete.
Simple Enough, Right?
I guess my commenting policy boils down to: Be nice and I’ll be nice. Be a jackass, and I have the prerogative to be more of a jackass than usual to you, if I should be in the mood to.
What’s your view on who owns a comment? What do you as a site author take liberties to do to comments you receive?
- Aren’t you all proud of me for having one? And aren’t I so happy about when people don’t bother to notice? [↩]
Blogging, Online, Opinion 
27 June 2008, 22:36
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I think commenter’s should own their words, no site should have the power to “steal” their ownership. Comments are written opinions so I believe no one has the right to own someone else’s opinion. I think grammatical errors can be fixed but maybe still have the unedited text on the comment, maybe in between <small> tags. Just a thought. Anyway, the author does have the option to delete the comment if it’s rude or something.
When I had a website with a comment policy, I made it very clear that I was to approve of the comments before they were displayed. I always let through comments with different opinions because that’s more interesting than a bunch of comments that say “I Agree”. There is a difference, though, between having a different opinion and just being a jerk.
Commenters own their words to a certain extent. It’s kind of like school. You have your rights, but they (teachers) are allowed to infringe on some of them. If a commenter really wanted their comment revoked from my site, I would remove it if they had a good reason. I feel, though, that if I don’t want to remove it, than I shouldn’t necessarily have to. The commenter owns their words, but you own the space it’s being displayed on.
@Jaclyn
I always thought that way too. Sites with overly aggressive, “You submit this and I can say it’s on my site I own the rights to it” TOS’s were full of bull. They’re still my words, even if I loaned them to the site owner. It’s like a research paper. Just because you incorporate someone else’s idea into your own hypothesis doesn’t make it yours. You gotta give credit where credit is due.
Oh, and btw, I edited your comment. You had the small tag in code tags, but everything on this site between code tags gets automatically escaped, so it was displaying like
< small >rather than like <small>. It was essentially being double-escaped. (I should probably note that everything between code tags is auto-escaped in the magic WP-generated XHTML tags paragraph, huh?)@Aaron
Yeah, I never delete comments just for having opposing opinions either. However, sometimes those people who have different opinions than me decide to be childish gits about it and call names in the same breath that they express their opinion. When they do that, that puts me in a difficult situation - to recognize their right to freedom of speech (because if they deleted my comment just for having an opposing opinion, I’d think that unfair), or to not be insulted mindlessly on my own website. Fortunately I’ve grown a bit of a thicker skin, so I can let childish insults go a little better than some percent of younger site owners. I find it very difficult to draw the line between when they’re saying something different and just being stupid when insults or namecalling are found in their comment.
Exactly. I guess that’s what I’m getting at, but for me it’s more of a childish, “If you’ve apologized and don’t want to look a right moron anymore, I’ll delete your mean and nasty comment. However, if you’re still a jerk, I’ll leave it up there and poke fun at you.” I guess that’s how a lot of site owners would react, but I still feel rather childish for feeling that way about situations like that.