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Friday, June 10, 2005
Blogumentary vs. Blogumentary
this is nothing new. livejournal was built on stuff like this.
- Mefi comment
Drama, drama!
I was out at recess and all the kids started shouting, BLOGFIGHT! This week's scrap comes to you courtesy of Chuck Olsen at blogumentary and John Hart at 59Bloggers. Both Olsen and Hart managed to make idiots of themselves and the resulting spat dragged a mob of bloggers into the mess and there was plenty of shame for all involved.
You're not feeling deja vu, we covered this ground before in Moxie vs. Moxie. Back then, Moxie and Dawn Olsen (related only in spirit, I imagine) launched an offensive against a blogger called MoxiePop, accusing her of "identity theft". In the ensuing battle, the woman behind 'MoxiePop' lost her job, blog relationships were severed and Moxie took the final step to the Dark Side and became a right-wing parody of herself.
In this reinterpretation of that classic drama (Olsen provides an excellent summary of the affair here), Olsen plays the Moxie role and Hart is MoxiePop, sans blog. Olsen launched the first salvo by emailing Hart, laying claim to the word 'blogumentary', which is the name of both his blog and a documentary he created about blogging. Hart responded with an email saying something like, 'bite me'.
Olsen did what anyone would do and posted the email to his blog, causing Hart to wig out and threaten legal action. Mob violence erupted and bloggers came to Olsen's defence, including some shirtless dude named Nathan Peters who emailed some bloggers, asking them not to particiate in the 59Bloggers project. Hart's reaction to this was to wig out -- again -- with a long, bizarre post making accusations against Olsen & Peters.
Finally, Hart calmed down and was interviewed and Olsen extended the olive branch. Peace.
The lesson from all of this? Don't wig out.
Hart clearly hadn't done anything wrong (ok, maybe he was a bit sloppy and his plan to have 'product placements' in his film is ridiculous) and Olsen was being a twit. Not just a twit, but a persistent, nitpicking, passive-aggressive twit. When Hart reacted, Olsen continued to prod -- he emailed a second time and when Hart responded by threatening legal action (not over the word "blogumentary", but because Olsen had posted his email), he initiated the mob (or as he describes it, "called for help") and even went as far as raising funds to trademark the word 'blogumentary'. Olsen cast himself in a good light as the "nice guy", but read the posts: he was being belligerent.
And worse, for an independent filmmaker, his actions displayed a sorry disregard for the current climate, where corporations encroach on fair use rights, launch frivolous lawsuits against P2P users and lobby to extend copyrights to keep works from entering the public domain. By confronting an obvious quack over a minor quibble, Olsen implicitly excuses the actions of groups like the RIAA.
Finally, as we saw with Moxie vs. Moxie, the only ones who win when bloggers fight are the people who cover the event: they see their traffic spike. Please link generously to this post.
6:52 PM
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