Will Deadwood Get a New Marshall?

A firestorm is evolving from the hot spot created around the Kathy Sierra blogging issue. Ms Sierra, a tech blogger, journalist and author, was attacked recently on a site called "rageboy.com," to the point that her life was threatened. A police investigation is currently underway, and the site attacking her has been taken down.

Now Tim O'Reilly, the publisher of all those O'Reilly tech books, has weighed in on the subject, arguing for a Blogger's Code of Conduct. Yesterday The New York Times published an article on the subject, "A Call for Manners in the World of Nasty Blogs."

Much of the discussion revolves around the notion promoted on the Web that authors "own their own words" and precisely what that means in the world of blogging. Ultimately, this issue will be resolved in much the same way as it is in any other area of journalism. You can publish what you want, but you will be responsible for what you publish. So if someone posts a comment on your blog, advocating the violent overthrow of the government and you do not exercise your editorial responsibility and edit that comment off the site, you can be held responsible just like the person who posted the comment, although perhaps not to the same degree.