March 9, 2005
Regarding Technorati's Community Manager, Niall Kennedy
Well, this has been an interesting and stressful few days, with a lot of charges thrown around the blogosphere about Technorati and Niall Kennedy, our Community Manager. As sometimes happens in the blogosphere, things have gotten a bit overblown.
For those of you who haven't been following the conversation, I suggest you read Niall's own words first. I think he eloquently explains what happened from his perspective, and it is a must-read if you want to get the context of this post.
http://www.niallkennedy.com/blog/archives/2005/03/whose_voice_is.html
We at Technorati support Niall 100%, and as his post above shows, he is publicly working through the issues of understanding that in his role of Community Manager, putting trademarked logos of companies in our industry into provocative images - on a Nazi soldier helmet, and in a pool of blood next to a dead soldier - those actions have repercussions on the company, not only to his own personal reputation. We all make mistakes - and we in fact are trying to build a culture where trying new things is encouraged, which means we're going to make more than our fair share of mistakes - but we hold ourselves accountable, take the criticism, and then move on. As Esther Dyson likes to say, "Always make new mistakes."
To address the censorship charge that was thrown about head-on: we do not censor people's blogs, and we take the censorship allegation extremely seriously. I actively encourage our employees to blog, and to express their opinions. However, many readers do not make as clear a distinction between personal and work lives as many experienced bloggers do, and will view a provocative image on a blog in the worst possible light, especially when presented by the company's Community Manager. Niall made the decision himself to post the things he posted, when he posted them. Other than the clear case of trademark violation (we asked him to remove the pictures that violated trademark, in order that we not be sued) his actions and postings have been completely his own, including his decision to take down his original post.
I am truly sorry. My mother is a holocaust survivor, so I understand how emotionally charged and easily misinterpreted these images can be. To those of you who wrote objecting to the content of the images, I'm very sorry that we let you down. I assure you that these are not Technorati's official positions or feelings about the companies and projects mentioned, and I humbly ask for your forgiveness. To Technorati employees: I'm very sorry that we didn't communicate quickly enough and well enough with you about all of this, it has taken a bit of time to get to the bottom of things, and to give Niall the time he needed to think things through.
We really value Niall's contributions. He started the first Technorati Users Group, he's attended every developer's meeting, and then as Community Manager, he helped organize and lead the recent spam summit, answers feedback email, comments on blogs, and he's a hard worker who has done a great job representing Technorati in the world. We're treating this as a learning experience for everybody and putting it behind us, and hope that the rest of you do too.
Posted by dsifry at March 9, 2005 12:12 AM
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David, may I just say that I think this is the best handling of the difficulties arising from the fuzzy interface between bloggers' personal life and work that I've seen so far.
It can't have been easy for you, Niall and Technorati. But it seems that all concerned have tried to deal with the situation promptly, with sensitivity and tact, the desire to explain fully the background, intentions and feelings of those involved, and the objective of trying to recognise and address the implications, understand all points of view and to strike a fair balance - which makes it much more likely that everyone will come out of this relatively intact, and certainly wiser and more aware. That attitude, that approach, is all too rare in this world and, in my view anyway, almost unheard of in the world of work.
I think that the way that this situation has been tackled makes it much more likely that, with you, Niall and Technorati, the rest of the world will be able to learn from what has happened and move on, too. And I believe they will.
Thanks Dave, this is really great leadership. I wrote up some of the things I learned from this on our Red Couch blog at http://redcouch.typepad.com.
Dave:
You and Niall handled this whole thing well. I didn't see the images so I can't have an opinion on the incident, but I certainly have one on the aftermath: outstanding and clear response.
Steve
Glad I withheld comment. Good job Dave. It would have been nice to hear from you guys earlier, but really I understand that things were just being worked through. And, really, the response time is downright astonishing by traditional corporate standards.
Well done. Now, can I interview you and Niall for my book? ;-)
If you want to say that there simply is no place in Technorati's corporate view of the world for an intersection betweeen professionalism and art, then you should have just said that. Most, if not all concerned, would probably cut you guys all the slack you need to get past this on that basis alone. Money talks and bullsh!t walks. If you are protecting your investment, don't be shy about it.
If however you're going to introduce something -- anything -- resembling mores and ethics into it, you're going to have to have a much longer, broader conversation.
The images were -- and this is always going to be a subjective assessment -- to me, just nowhere near as provocative as you're insinuating. I think you've over-reacted to them, or are being directed to action on the basis of others' over-reactions.
The notion of the content constituting trademark violation is quite possibly specious AFAIK -- at least, in terms of there being any company liability. Which is not to say you couldn't have been subject to some amount of litigious harassment over it. I'm disappointed that you guys appear to be have been easily cowed by the mere possibility, however.
I urge you to think again about this and disregard the sycophantic congratulations of others who appear strangely eager to tell you what a good boy you've been. Yes, you're doing what a good CEO should do, getting out and addressing the issue, providing a rational explanation for your actions.
But in the process, it is possible you've taken a step backwards in some regard, and because of the position you occupy in the market and in your own organization, you may have possibly hauled several others back with you.
It is not always good to be king.
I do wish you and the rest of the folks over there well, insofar as what you do is interesting and useful and smart.
Good Job Dave !! one question.. what took you so long to get this posting up ?? If this come out as sooner, there would been far less chatter within blogsphere..needless to mention the enchancement and leverage of creditablity from the word get-go.. for both the employee and the employer.
"One cool judgement is worth a thousand hasty counsels. The thing to be supplied is light, not heat" - W.Wilson
I commend both you and Naill !!
Nicely done, David.
One question though. The art work as described is a parody, a protected type of speech, including the use of trade and symbol marks. And since NK didn't create the work as an agent of Technorati, I'd think T's litigation exposure would be negligible.
I could be wrong.
Was there ever a discussion of alternate original art that made the same point, but without the Nazi references? Cold war and Stalinist imagery is more kitsch than WWII, raising fewer hackles.
David -
I agree you have very quickly come to a new consensus with Niall, but I profoundly differ with the thinking that defines it.
Individuals must be permitted a private life outside of work, where what they say as private individuals is interpreted as exactly that. We, in the blogosphere, should collectively assert that truth over and over, and resist the blurring of the line between personal and corporate expression, or else, inexorably, corporations will determine what employees can say, either through direct coercion or more subtle forms of mind control.
The fact that Niall has come to believe that there is no such distinction possible in the modern world is a perspective that should be argued against whenever it crops up, even if he fervently believes it after this flap. He is wrong, and it is wrong if he gets kudos for his new understanding of the dissolution of the private self.
Just as important, employers should support individual free expression of their employees even if the sentiments being expressed are unfashionable or objectionable to others, so long as they are not illegal. And the observation has been made at various places in the blogosphere (like my blog, www.corante.com/getreal) that the use of copyrighted icons is fair use for parody and satire under first ammendment protections, so there is little chance that Technorati would be harmed in that way, even if it had been posted ata Technorati blog, which it wasn't, anyway.
While this has not turned out to be another "doocing" (the firing of an employee for blogging) and you may never have even raised the issues of Niall losing his job over this, I think it sets a bad example. Even in the heart of the blogosphere, employers like Technorati are not standing by the principle of individual free expression and liberty.
I hope next time that some critic complains about objectional content on an employee's blog, you instead tell the critic to reread the first ammendment.
- Stowe
"Other than the clear case of trademark violation (we asked him to remove the pictures that violated trademark, in order that we not be sued)"
From what I was able to assemble on my machine based on Kennedy's description of the images, there is no "violation" of copyright when somebody collages logos into another image to make an artistic and political point. The law has long held that such compilations for political or artistic purposes is well outside of successful litigation.
Case in point, the endless uses of the CBS eye in editorial cartoons over the last few days of Dan Rather in newspapers and on blogs large and small. There are thousands of others. If Technorati's attorneys did not point this out, they are incompetent.
At the same time, if Technorati's attorneys did not also point out that anyone can sue over anything these days and you've got to pay your attorneys no matter what, that's competent.
If you don't want to pay, say so. We understand. But do not pretend that some sort of copyright violation was involved because it is simply not the case. In fact it smudges the issues here and tries for ye olde end state of way-new companies everywhere, the win-win where the company wins.
This is the old Godfather line: "Its not personal, it's business." Except, of course, it is always personal.
I beg to differ that Stalinist imagery is less painful. Many families were persecuted by Stalin's political and military machine. Pick any image (including Uncle Sam) and someone somewhere may have a negative reaction to it.
The whole purpose of using images is to get a reaction. Technorati's job is to figure out if it has a stake in the artwork of its employees, and if so, create a policy that it is willing to publish for all current and future employees.
If Niall writes a poem, or describes a dream that he had, he deserves (and others too) to know whether it will have an impact on his employment.
Kudos on transparency anyway, guys. I doubt that any spinoff has much heat. We need to find ways for charicature to flourish.
I'm founder and CEO of Technorati. I was the cofounder and CTO of Sputnik and Linuxcare, founding board member of Linux International, and board member of AOTC. I've been around the block a few
times. Some might call me a serial entrepreneur. A more personal but less-updated site has more information about me - pictures, speeches, software, etc. You can contact me at david-blog@sifry.com.
