Seth Finkelstein replies to my previous posting on companies’ press policies by suggesting that companies are rational to keep their engineers away from the press, because of concerns about being unfairly misquoted.

I can see his point, by I think hatchet-job stories are pretty rare in the respectable media, and I also think that most readers recognize such stories and discount them. Reporters resent being manipulated and are more likely to seize on a misstatement if it is the only interesting thing you say. If you want them to write about substance, you have to talk to them about substance.

Seth’s example, the “Al Gore invented the Internet” story, is a good illustration. Gore’s organization was trying to manipulate the press, as all political campaigns do. Gore was available to the press mainly in highly scripted situations, so when he went off script and said something he shouldn’t have said, it was newsworthy.

(And though too much was made of Gore’s statement, he did say, “I took the initiative in creating the Internet”, which just isn’t true. Yes, Gore deserves credit for promoting the Internet before almost anyone else on Capitol Hill had even heard of it; and yes, he did take the initiative in funding the Internet at a crucial stage of its build-out. But there is a big difference between creating something and merely paying for a stage of its construction.)

I wrote yesterday about the ARDG’s policy, banning the press from the otherwise open ARDG meetings. Apparently the official rationale for this is that some companies refuse to allow the people who represent them at ARDG meetings to speak to the press.

I have to admit that I find these companies’ policies hard to understand. A company trusts somebody to speak on its behalf in a public forum, where many of the company’s competitors and customers are present, and where everybody is welcome to take notes. And yet somehow it is too dangerous to let that employee say the same things if a reporter is also present.

In my experience, companies that allow their best engineers to speak in public get more respect than ones that don’t. I can understand the desire to manage a company’s image, but reporters and the public have gotten pretty good at separating vacuous marketing-speak from substantive discussion, and at ignoring the former. You’re not doing yourself any favors by blocking access to the people who can best articulate your technical vision.

Microsoft’s approach to the Berkeley DRM conference is a great example of the benefits of letting your engineers speak. This was a large conference with many reporters present. Microsoft sent several senior engineers, who gave substantive presentations and engaged in real debate. What they said was not spin-free, of course, but whether you agreed or disagreed with their arguments, you had to respect them for participating in the debate.

James Grimmelmann’s definitive account of the Berkeley DRM conference has this to say:

… the [Microsoft] people at the conference are among the straightest shooters …. Compared with the other industry flacks

Several groups, including the EFF, Consumers Union, DigitalConsumer, and PublicKnowledge, have sent a letter objecting to the Analog Reconversion Discussion Group (ARDG), objecting to ARDG’s policy of refusing journalists access to its “open” meetings.

Despite its confusing name, ARDG is an important process, reflecting the efforts of some to promote, and perhaps eventually to mandate, the use of technical restrictions to close the “analog hole” (i.e., to make it impossible to capture and copy non-digital media). ARDG’s no-press policy is not just theoretical – Drew Clark of the National Journal’s Tech Daily was actually ejected from an ARDG meeting.

ARDG allows note-taking, discussions with the press afterwards, and even web-posting of accounts of their meetings. They claim their process is open. And yet they insist on the no-press policy.

The policy is particularly hard to understand in today’s media world. Am I a member of the press? I publish commentary and/or news content to the public on most days, with a readership of a few thousand. By traditional standards I am a member of the press. If I tried to attend an ARDG meeting, would they kick me out too?

I read Slashdot every day. It’s one of the best sources for tech news, and it contains many nuggets of useful information and informed commentary. If anything interesting happens in the tech world, Slashdot will discuss it.

Sadly, the treasures of Slashdot are often buried in a vast wasteland of speculation, misinformation, and irrelevant blathering. For example, the commentary on yesterday’s California Supreme Court ruling on the Pavlovich case includes this gem, contributed by an “Anonymous Coward:”

Livid was fully functioning as was DeCSS BEFORE nov 30th 1999.

DMCA does not cover software or hardware created BEFORE the begginning of 2000.

This is a fact.

DMCA will NEVER have any bearing on the original frozen sources of Nov 1999 Livid …

DMCA start date was a few months too late.

Despite its emphatic tone, this posting is just wrong: the relevant portions of the DMCA went into effect in October 1998. There is nothing in the DMCA exempting programs created before 2000 or 1998 or any other date.

In theory, Slashdot’s collective moderation process is supposed to weed out ill-informed postings by downgrading their scores; but in practice that doesn’t happen as often as one would like. The posting I quoted above has the maximum possible moderation score (5). Worse yet, the moderators have given it the label “Informative”. Readers who trust this posting will be ill-informed at best, and at worst may break the law.

(There is a response comment on Slashdot, written by “Guppy06,” pointing out the inaccuracy. This response has moderation score 3, and label “Interesting.” But an “Anonymous Coward,” perhaps the original poster, disputes Guppy06’s conclusion.)

By this point, I have probably provoked enough flamage to destroy several medium-sized cities. So let me say it again: I like Slashdot. I’m glad I can read Slashdot, and I thank its many well-informed participants for making it worth reading, despite its often depressing signal-to-noise ratio.