Holly Jahangiri says:

@DiTesco, thanks. Behaving ethically really does go hand in hand with behaving respectfully. I don’t object too much to links in post text, if the author chooses to add them – well, yes, now that I think about it, I do. Because when I put links in my post text, they’re hand-crafted to add supplemental info and I really hope my readers will click on them. They’re all relevant and chosen by me, with some real thought behind them. And now, with so many blogs using utterly mindless and meaningless commercial links in their text, I think it keeps people wary – that may explain why people aren’t willing to peel back the layers and travel where my roadmap leads them.

Hmm.

Holly Jahangiri says:

@Rose, I’m sure I’ve run across it elsewhere, but it didn’t register. Or I assumed the comment authors were adding links to their own comments. And it doesn’t do it on EVERY comment, you know? Just enough to fly under the radar. I don’t care what an author or blog operator does to their own posts, but I do care what they do to my comments or guest posts. It’s one thing to edit (with my permission) any typos I might’ve left behind (assuming they ARE typos); it’s quite another to change meaning or context, or to imply endorsement of any product or service.

Holly Jahangiri
Twitter: HollyJahangiri
says:

@Heather Kephart, Lost in Translation’s still out there – it’s still instructive. Any time someone says, “Can’t we just run it through Google’s translation tools?” I use it to save a human translator’s job.
.-= Holly Jahangiri hopes you will read…Win an Autographed Copy of A Puppy, Not a Guppy =-.

Holly Jahangiri says:

Adding Infolinks to a comment written by a third party who has not consented to that modification of the content of their comment (and any resulting implied endorsement of a product/service) is far more unethical, in my opinion, than, say, editing out a typo or a dirty word. (I prefer to either let a comment stand as is, or delete it entirely.) ALLOWING a reader to translate content on a blog (as opposed to PUBLISHING machine-translated content anywhere without the author’s consent) is a convenience to the reader, thus something I’m not going to make a big stink about, but I hope the reader would be astute enough to realize that the results are often ludicrous, not just incorrect, and not take offense where none is intended. Any translation is still technically a derivative work that should be explicitly agreed to by the author.

Copyright on comments isn’t really all that vague. What may be vague is what implied rights are granted in posting them. Clearly the author intends for the comment to be publicly displayed in conjunction with a particular post; therefore, by necessity, the author grants to the blogger a limited license to display the comment electronically, on that blog, on that post, and in any syndicated RSS feeds (I have theoretical issues with that last bit, just as I do with caching on any search engine, but it’s a practical reality that is – usually – something most of us find desirable.) Just as clearly, I believe the commenter has the right to expect that their comments not be moved or modified in such a way that they are taken out of context. I don’t think too many people would object to a minor spelling edit (provided the editor is correct, and doesn’t make the original author look like a doofus). There are some who would argue that the blogger has an obligation to display all comments posted, but I would argue that they do not. (A newspaper has no obligation to publish letters to the editor.) See:

http://www.o-creative.com/blog/who-owns-copyright-to-blog-comments/
http://www.webpronews.com/topnews/2008/06/16/who-owns-blog-comments

And lots of others – but my point in citing these is that I think Tyler Ochoa’s position is the most sensible; I also think it’s sensible to assume that a blogger has the right to DELETE a comment – any comment – but not to modify it in such a way as to alter its meaning. Further, although a blogger would have a “compilation copyright” on the entire contents of his blog, I don’t think that implies a right to publish in a completely different medium – such as a print book – particularly for commercial purposes without the consent of and compensation to the author(s) of the comments.

The only implied right I grant to a blogger when I comment is the right to electronically display my comment on a particular post. It’s a limited license necessitated by the desire to engage in a particular conversation. I do not grant him the right to reproduce it in a printed article or to use it as a post (yes, I do sometimes write whole posts as comments, and no, you can’t take them and turn them into “guest posts” without explicit permission).

Back to Infolinks for a moment, though – even Infolinks says you can’t use their plug-in on third party content (including comments) without the consent of the author of the comment or third-party content, which is why I didn’t criticize them more harshly in my post. It’s in their FAQ. They don’t encourage using it in comments, but it is an option. I think a prominent notice should be required near the comment box, informing visitors that their comment content may be used and modified to promote products they don’t even get to approve first. I think it’s clearly unethical otherwise – especially given that the FTC rules regarding endorsements say that it is a matter of reader perception, not the endorser’s intent, that governs whether a thing is an “endorsement” or not. I’m not even a party to it, but would a casual reader understand that? (Look closely at the potential conflict of interest angle, too – I have no control over what brands, products, or services are advertised in conjunction with words or phrases in my comments – and could be put in the uncomfortable position of endorsing a competitor’s product by proxy. That’s unethical.)