To: WSFAlist at keithlynch.net
Date: Wed, 9 Jul 2003 00:02:53 -0400
Subject: [WSFA] Re: Livejournal
From: ronkean at juno.com
Reply-To: WSFA members <WSFAlist at keithlynch.net>

On Tue, 8 Jul 2003 22:15:41 -0400 (EDT) "Keith F. Lynch"
<kfl at KeithLynch.net> writes:
> I am hurt and offended at the reaction to my message.  In more than
> a week, NOT ONE person so much as hinted that telling WSFAns of
> each
> other's livejournals might not be appropriate.  NOT ONE suggested
> that a week might be too short, and that I should give more time or
> ask again.
>

It is unfortunate that the Livejournal 'tempest in a teapot' seems to
have engendered a round of bad feeling.  To keep things in perspective,
Keith made what he thought was an adequate effort to respect members'
privacy and wishes, and he thought that posting the portion of
information for which he got no objection might be of some benefit, and
would be at worst harmless.  Almost everyone else seems to have
considered the matter of little import, and of those who objected after
the fact, only one or two appear to be seriously miffed.

I think that the root of this controversy lies in there being more than
one way to define privacy.  Or, to put it another way, an action which
might be considered a breach of privacy in the view of one person might
not be such in the view of another.  Keith undoubtedly wants to respect
the privacy of the members of this list, and apparently Keith is inclined
to presume that anything a list member has posted elsewhere as a publicly
accessible blog is not something they wish to keep private from the
members of this list, and he took the further precaution of posting the
list of those members whose LJ IDs he was proposing to post, and waited a
week before following through on that.

But some members were rankled by that, or, if not personally rankled, at
least took the position that what Keith did was not proper.  That is
consistent with a somewhat different view of privacy, that people might
not want attention called to information about them, which though
publicly accessible, would normally tend to remain unknown to most of the
person's friends, relatives, and acquaintances.  For example, someone who
frequents gambling casinos might well not want that to be known to his
fellow church members.  A grown man who collects teddy bears might want
to keep that private from most of his friends, even though he may openly
attend the teddy bear conventions without wearing a disguise and without
staying at the hotel under a pseudonym.

In some ways, this reminds me of an incident which happened at Best Buy a
few years ago.  A customer was making note of the model numbers and
prices of merchandise displayed - he thought he was shopping wisely,
comparing prices and features before making a buying decision.  Best Buy
employees who observed him asked him to leave the store, and when he
indignantly refused the police were summoned.  The shopper thought he
wasn't doing anything wrong, but apparently the store manager thought he
might be a 'professional shopper', a sort of spy who is employed by
competing retailers to keep detailed track of competitive prices.  The
'spy', of course, is only collecting information which is quite public,
but retailers sometimes try to thwart those efforts.  After news articles
appeared about the incident, there was some lively discussion about
whether Best Buy was justified in ejecting the shopper from the store.

Ron Kean

.

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