Some interesting questions have been raised this week:
Is it ok to “slag someone off” in your blog? Have we yet earned the right to comment on the work of practicing professionals? Is it alright for lecturers to invite people to speak without forewarning them that the students will be posting on their blogs about these people and that these blog posts will be accessible on the internet and readily found by Google?
As we all know it’s incredibly easy to criticise, but to be able to write intelligent, constructive criticism is a sought after skill and rare to find. Perhaps taking more care and consideration over what we write and put out there for the world to see would be a good idea. People have fought and died not only for our freedom of speech, but also for our freedom not to speak and to sit back and carefully consider things before we open our mouths. What does everyone else think?
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3 comments:
At the end of the day I think it was her name, as an artist that she felt was being damaged. And she was right to be angry. Who wouldn't? We have a right to opinion but not to slander someone.
I think she was threatening to sue the college rather than the 2 students? As you cannot sue someone based on an opinion.
The college should remember to remind their students not to allow their blogs to appear on google search results.
I think in our context as students, critism is all well and good if your being constructive. For example, if you hate a piece of work and you want to review it and say so, then you should suggest ways it could have been imporved, and balance your argument by looking at some positives too. I think you should also always re-affirm it is your own opinion and not to make any slanderous or possible untrue comments. (e.g, say ' in my opinion the work was bad because...' not just 'the work was bad'.
Having said that though, many good professional reviews are negative, and I don't entirely frrwn upon them, as it seems ludicrous to pretend you like everything just to be PC. I think it goes to intent. If your going to be truthful, you should be dimplomatic about it and not slanderous in any way.
I think we could probably all do with looking up any legal guidelines out there about the subject.
It does seem unfair that a speaker can be proffesionally damaged by a couple of reviews that were written based on a couple of hours talk. I myself was not at the session in question, and only read one of the reviews, which to me seemed very negative and slightly nasty, but did not seem slanderous. I can see both sides of the argument.
I think it would be a good idea to let the speakers know they are going to be published online though, just out of courtesy. Photographers can't publish images of people without their consent, and it seems odd to me that writers can publish almost any info they want about people without even telling the person in question.
I disagree about blogs not going onto google though, I think it'smore important to keep your blog proffesional so that prospective employers or clients can see it.
i think its important to be allowed to express your opinion, even if it may not be correct, constructive or nice for someone else to hear.
If you start filtering free speach, it isnt free anymore. This does mean that people who have no idea what they are talking about get to talk about nothing, but i think thats a small sacrifice.
It was far from slander. It is impossible to link a students blog to a loss of an artists earnings. negative comments dont lead to a loss of money for artists - look at Tracy Emin!You can not sue students or a college for a blog, thats what China do.
Blogs and anything published online appears on google searches unless you make them private. If its online, its not that private so im sure at some stage it would appear on google anyway. By us mentioning an artists name over and over and linking to their site, that site gets pushed up the rankings and becomes stronger, not our blogs. Whatever comments positive or negative, the artists has benifited in the digital world.
Nice comment claire. Photographers can take pictures of people in a public place and publish them without consent, as long as there is more than a few people in the picture. (in the UK) Once the photo is taken it is 100% the photographers copywrited property, even if the person is famous etc.
If I felt that could get in trouble for writing a well rounded comment about an artists work that they presented in public, even if it wasnt what they wanted me to say, i would feel alot less free.
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