Blogs and other internet sites should be covered by a voluntary code of practice similar to that for newspapers in the UK, a conference has been told.
Press Complaints Commission director Tim Toulmin said he opposed government regulation of the internet, saying it should a place "in which views bloom".
But unless there was a voluntary code of conduct there would be no form of redress for people angered at content.
Source: BBC NEWS
Oh dear; talk about a guy who doesn't get it. The last thing that blogs need is a code of conduct. Anyway, how would it work? Who would police it? I mean, if I broke the code of conduct, who'd know, who's going to check all the UK based blogs? Even if some government agency did that, why should it just be UK blogs that suffer this way? If I don't agree with the code of conduct, wouldn't I just host my blog somewhere else?
However, where Tim misses the point the most is where he says "there would be no form of redress" . Of course there would! That's the whole point of blogging; it's to start a conversation. I say X, you disagree and say Y a third person says Z. That's what it's all about. It's not about getting redress for something you disagree with, it's about joining the global conversation. It's newspapers and other MSM where there is no conversation that need to look at changing, not blogs.