Forbes attacks blogs

Looks like corporate America is a little scared of the internet. Via Boing Boing and Slashdot, the most frightened, yellow-journalistic story I've ever read about blogs. Lets take a look.

Web logs are the prized platform of an online lynch mob spouting liberty but spewing lies, libel and invective. Their potent allies in this pursuit include Google and Yahoo.

Sounds like a scary bunch. Wouldn't want to meet any of them.

OK, some blogs can be pretty heavy on the invective, probably this one included. But the Forbes article mostly attacks blogs as being baseless in their questioning of companies, without regard for what those companies might have done to deserve criticism. Here's a bit I liked:

No wonder companies now live in fear of blogs. "A blogger can go out and make any statement about anybody, and you can't control it. That's a difficult thing,"says Steven Down, general manager of bike lock maker Kryptonite, owned by Ingersoll-Rand and based in Canton,Mass.

Last year bloggers posted videos [here] showing how to break open a Kryptonite lock using a ballpoint pen.That much was true. But they also spread bogus information--that all Kryptonite models could be cracked with a pen; that it is the only brand with this vulnerability; and that Kryptonite knew about the problem and covered it up.None of these claims is true, but a year later Kryptonite still struggles to set the record straight, while spending millions to replace locks.

Lets take this apart a bit.

(1) Bloggers can make statements you can't control, and that's bad. OK, that kind of reasoning concerns me a lot. Good thing no one thinks it would be a good idea for the government to think more like a corporation. Oh, wait...

(2) Kryptonite is a victim of unethical bloggers, even though they produced locks that could be opened with a Bic pen. Personally, while I understand there may be some injustice in any claims that all of the companies locks are so easily opened, I find it incredibly concerning that anyone could think to blame the blogs who exposed this critical (and really funny) security breach, rather than Kryptonite itself, for the millions spent to replace the locks. Customers' property was put at risk by poor design at Kryptonite. They should have to pay for that. Simple for a consumer to see, apparently very difficult to understand by corporations and their media allies like Forbes.

(3) Oh, and Engaget seems to take a pretty specific look at the problem, naming one line of locks rather than using a vauge term like "u-locks" or something. It sure would be annoying, though, if anybody published an attack article about some incredibly varied thing that isn't precise about which of that thing it's talking about and provides no evidence.

The Forbes article goes on to attack Google as well:

Google says ad revenue isn't the point. The real aim is "to let users embrace the Web as a medium of self-expression," a spokesman says. Google lets them run wild. Yet Google edits and censors blog content all the time--to protect its own interests. The company, whose portentous corporate ethos includes the mantra "Don't be evil," snuffs out blogs that engage in "phishing" (tricking people into revealing confidential information) and "spam blogs" that skew Google's search results.

Quick lesson in what's possible, Forbes. It's easy to find and remove spam and phishing blogs, because they're engaging in activity that is mechanically recognizable and perhaps detectable, and there is no question that such blogs are spamming or phishing. Libel, on the other hand, is incredibly difficult to deal with on the scale you're suggesting that Google should, because it isn't so easy to prove whether anyone has actually lied. So please don't ask for Google to let you squelch free speech just cause you've got more lawyers than the average blogger.

But I think what's really got people pissed is the sidebar on fighting back. It's first two suggestions, monitoring the blogosphere and starting your own blog, are good and consistent with the blog community. The third, to buy your way into an army of sympathetic bloggers, seems pretty crooked, and would surely result in ridicule if anyone found out. The fourth suggestion, to smear the blogger, is nasty but within the realm of normal blog behavior. The last two methods are crazy evil, though. Forbes advises its readers to use DMCA to attack ISPs, and to sue bloggers. There's a reason that these are the most likely tactics to get your company to be public enemy number one on slashdot - they're fundamentally unfair, given the vast legal resources of a large company as compared to the indie blogger, and they threaten the structure and existence of the free internet. It is irresponsible for Forbes to suggest these methods of business to its readers. But, nothing about the whole article strikes me as particularly more responsible than the bloggers it vilifies.