News Blog

LOS ANGELES--If Jim Brady had his way, there would be no guaranteed anonymity for those who post comments to Washingtonpost.com.

Brady, executive editor of The Washington Post's online division, said during a panel discussion at the Digital Hollywood conference here that he would like to see a technology that could identify people who violate site standards--and if need be--automatically kick them off for good.

Brady has a notable history with this issue and I'll get to that. First, his position must be made clear. In an interview following the panel discussion, Brady said he doesn't want people's personal information for any other reason but to hold them accountable for what they post. He said he's not--as he has been accused by some--an enemy of free speech. He just wants to oversee a site where readers engage in civil discourse and debate without fear of it degenerating into a "back alley environment."

"I think part of the problem is that people aren't held accountable on the Web," Brady said. "People say things online they would never say when disagreeing with someone at the dinner table. I think heated debate is fine, but when there are (flame wars), many people won't take part for fear they will be attacked and bashed over the head with the (Internet-equivalent) of a steel pipe."

Brady knows how intensely many Internet users disagree with him. He made headlines in January 2006 after shutting down the comments area of a blog where outraged readers gathered to rebuke the Post's ombudsman, Deborah Howell.

Following the Jack Abramoff lobbying scandal, Howell erred when she said that the lobbyist gave campaign donations to Democrats as well as Republicans. Abramoff gave only to Republicans. The paper's Web site saw more than 1,000 comments, many from people who accused the Post of conspiring with the Republicans.

Things got worse when Howell posted a clarification. When Brady saw that many of those comments violated the paper's policy against the use of profanity or personal attacks, he blocked users' ability to post. The decision was widely criticized. In defense of his decision, Brady wrote that many of the posts weren't comments at all, but the kind of thing "you might find carved on the door of a public toilet stall."

I reminded Brady that many people feel strongly about their right to privacy online. He responded that he feels strongly about it too, but there are plenty of sites that take an anything-goes approach and that people who want to drop F-bombs and blast each other should go there. "We don't want our site to be sanitized, but we have the right to create a different kind of community," Brady said.

Brady also lamented that closing user accounts doesn't keep bad eggs off a site. They just come back and create new ones. He said that his site can identify someone's IP address, but it's not an elegant solution because blocking them can be tricky. "You don't want to end up blocking the entire Department of Energy or something like that," he said.

Pluck, a company that provides social-networking software, helps maintain some of the Post's blogs and has implemented a "bozo filter," which can isolate comments that include banned words or phrases, according to Brady.

But this isn't a solution. Brady believes that in the next five years people will be required to identify themselves in some way at many sites. "I don't know whether we do it with a credit card number, a driver's license or passport, but I think making people responsible would raise the level of discourse."

Greg Sandoval is a former Washington Post staff writer.

EveryBlock is in the hyper-niche news business.

Don't be misled by the name. EveryBlock doesn't endeavor to tell users what's happening on every block--just their blocks. Users can key in their ZIP codes or street addresses and EveryBlock tells them what's happening in their immediate area. They can learn about local crimes, which businesses have filed for liquor licenses, or whether any nearby streets are closed for construction.

Someone pilfer your laptop? EveryBlock links to lost-and-found Craigslist postings in your area.

EveryBlock offers the kind of information that typically isn't covered in a metropolitan or even a local newspaper. "The kind of information we provide is only news if you live near it," said Adrian Holovaty, the site's founder.

Holovaty, 27, earned some notoriety in 2005 for creating Chicagocrime.org, a mashup of Google maps and crime reports from the Chicago Police Department. For the past two years, Holovaty has worked for the digital unit of The Washington Post.

EveryBlock was born out of Holovaty's journalism background and his desire to improve upon Chicagocrime.org, he said.

Holovaty funded the project with a $1.1 million grant from the Knight Foundation, which promotes innovation in journalism. The site is currently only available in Chicago, San Francisco and New York, but Holovaty said he intends to expand as he's fined-tuned the service some more.

The site focuses on hard-to-find info from public records or data that didn't exist on the Web until posted on EveryBlock, Holovaty said. For example, anytime someone applies for a permit to do construction work on a San Francisco street, or to shoot a movie studio on Chicago's Michigan Avenue, EveryBlock gives users in those areas a heads up.

Since nothing of interest ever occurs in my San Francisco neighborhood (Sunset District), I chose to test EveryBlock with a coworker's hipper ZIP code (Mission).

First, because EveryBlock links to Flickr photos that have been "geocoded" to a particular point, I was led to a series of photo galleries. One included an interesting series on witty messages San Franciscans have scrawled in wet cement.

This was followed by a listing of 46 crimes in and around the neighborhood. Then came a link to a news story about a police car that crashed into a local liquor store and blog post about a man who attempted to holdup an area bar but was thwacked by patrons wielding pool cues.

Who wouldn't want to know that their local bar was the scene of this kind of neighborhood unity?

The Washington Post has backed off a story that erroneously accused the recording industry of trying to criminalize ripping CDs to a computer.

The Post issued a correction Saturday, more than a week after the paper triggered a wave of media coverage by claiming that the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) was trying to outlaw the very common practice of copying music from a CD onto a computer or iPod.

"A Dec. 30 Style and Arts column incorrectly said that the recording industry maintains that it is illegal for someone who has legally purchased a CD to transfer that music into his computer," the Post's correction reads. "In a copyright infringement lawsuit the industry's lawyer argued that the actions of an Arizona man, the defendant were illegal because the songs were located in a shared folder on his computer for distribution on a peer-to-peer network."

The reference to "shared folder" was key. In the Post's story, the writer quoted from a legal brief filed by the RIAA in the case of Jeffrey Howell, an Arizona man accused by recording companies of illegal file sharing. The author of the Post's story said that the RIAA maintained "that it is illegal for someone who has legally purchased a CD to transfer that music into his computer."

But anyone reading the brief will see that in all such references, the RIAA was arguing that it was illegal for someone to make copies and then distribute those copies over file-sharing networks.

Soon after the story appeared, several high-profile blogs, including Techdirt, Gizmodo, and Engadget, wrote that something was amiss.

Mike Masnick at Techdirt noted that other previous stories about the RIAA's legal brief had been debunked.

"Unfortunately (and for reasons unclear to me), the Washington Post has revived the story," Masnick wrote on Jan. 2. "That's simply not true."

Nonetheless, dozens of other media sites repeated the Post's claims. The Web was filled with headlines like "RIAA Goes After 'Personal Use' Doctrine," "We're All Thieves to the RIAA," and "RIAA Equates Ripping With Stealing."

In response to the Post's decision to correct the story, the RIAA issued a brief statement on Monday: "We appreciate that the Washington Post cleared the record."

Editor's note: Greg Sandoval is a former Washington Post staff writer.

An executive with the music industry's lobbying group engaged in a verbal sparring match on Thursday with the Washington Post columnist who alleges that the organization is trying to outlaw the practice of copying CDs to a computer.

National Public Radio hosted in on-air debate between Marc Fisher, the Post columnist, and Cary Sherman, president of the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA). The way I saw it, Fisher was ill advised to debate. What was exposed was a reporter who doesn't want to admit to making a mistake and has dug his heels in. Meanwhile, according to Sherman, Fisher has misled consumers.

Early in the debate, Fisher was on the defense as Sherman picked apart his story, which appeared on Sunday. In the piece Fisher quoted from a court document, filed in the case of an Arizona man accused by the RIAA of illegal file sharing. Fisher wrote that the quotes demonstrated that the lobbying group was now challenging the right of music fans to rip CDs to their computers.

Copying CDs to a computer or an iPod is common all over the world and if Fisher's claims were correct, the RIAA would be painting millions of people as criminals. The story became national news and scores of publications repeated Fisher's claims.

But as numerous bloggers and copyright experts have noted, the quotes cited by Fisher are incomplete. Fisher wrote that the RIAA had argued in the brief that MP3 files created from legally bought CDs are "unauthorized copies" and violate the law.

"The Post picked up one sentence in a 21-page brief and then picked the part of the sentence about ripping CDs onto the computer," Sherman said during the radio show. "(The Post) simply ignored the part of the sentence about putting them into a shared folder."

The "shared folder" omission is at the center of what's wrong with Fisher's story. Anyone who reads the brief can see that the RIAA says over and over again what it considers to be illegal activity: the distribution of music files via peer-to-peer networks.

Fisher didn't address this issue during the debate. Instead he moved on to testimony given by Jennifer Pariser, a Sony BMG lawyer, who said during an earlier court case: "when an individual makes a copy of a song for himself, I suppose we can say he stole a song."

This is when Sherman really went to work on Fisher's story.

"The Sony person who (Fisher) relies on actually misspoke in that trial," Sherman said. "I know because I asked her after stories started appearing. It turns out that she had misheard the question. She thought that this was a question about illegal downloading when it was actually a question about ripping CDs. That is not the position of Sony BMG. That is not the position of that spokesperson. That is not the position of the industry."

Sherman said that other reporters and bloggers had called about Pariser's quotes and chose not to write about them after learning she had erred.

Why wasn't Fisher offered this information? Well, he would have been had he spoken to anyone at the RIAA, Sherman said.

Prior to writing the story Fisher called the RIAA for a statement once and left a message, according to Sherman. When the RIAA's spokesman returned the call two hours later, he missed Fisher. But Fisher never called back to get the RIAA's statement even though the story wasn't published until nine days later.

It's customary for journalists to give the subject of a story a chance to be quoted--especially when they're slamming them.

Again, Fisher declined to address Sherman's accusations. He moved on to statements that appear on the RIAA's Web site, which he claims show that the group considers copying music to a computer as unlawful.

But Sherman suggested that Fisher was once again being selective with the RIAA's statements. Sherman showed the location on the site where the RIAA says that people can typically copy music for personal use without any problems.

"They go on to equivocate and say, 'Well, usually it won't raise concerns if you go ahead and transfer legally obtained music to your computer,'" Fisher said during the debate, "but they won't go all the way and say that it's a legal right."

Here was an opportunity for Sherman to declare once and for all that copying CDs for personal use is lawful. He stopped short of that, saying that copyright law is too complex to make such sweeping statements. He did state that there is one foolproof way of discovering the RIAA's policy on personal use: check the record.

"Not a single (legal) case has ever been brought (by the RIAA against someone for copying music for personal use)," Sherman said. "Not a single claim has ever been made."

In the final analysis, this is really a story about journalism ethics more than it is about technology. Fisher is a respected journalist who probably should remember one of the first things they teach cub reporters: when someone challenges you over a story, it's smart to think of worst-case scenarios.

Reporters are reminded to ask themselves whether they could defend everything they did during the reporting and writing process if ever sued? If the RIAA ever took the Post to court over the issue, Fisher might have to explain why he omitted important sections of the RIAA's legal brief. He would have to justify not trying harder to get RIAA comment.

If a reporter's work doesn't stand up, the typical remedy at most media organizations is to issue a correction. That's what the Post should do in this case.

Greg Sandoval is a former Washington Post staff writer.

It's late on Wednesday evening and the Washington Post has yet to correct a story that accused the recording industry of trying to paint law-abiding music fans as criminals.

But the paper should make things right and soon.

Marc Fisher, a Post columnist, wrote on Sunday that the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) asserted in a legal brief that anyone who copies music from a CD onto their computer is a thief. The document, filed last month, was part of the RIAA's copyright suit against Jeffrey Howell, an Arizona resident accused of illegal file sharing.

Quoting from the brief, Fisher wrote that the RIAA had argued that MP3 files created from legally bought CDs are "unauthorized copies" and violate the law. If it were true, the move would represent a major shift in strategy by the RIAA, which typically hasn't challenged an individual's right to copy CDs for personal use.

The problem with Fisher's story is that nowhere in the RIAA's brief does the group call someone a criminal for simply copying music to a computer. Throughout the 21-page brief, the recording industry defines what it considers to be illegal behavior and it boils down to this: creating digital recordings from CDs and then uploading them to file-sharing networks.

A sentence on page 15 of the brief clearly spells out the RIAA's position: "Once (Howell) converted plaintiff's recording into the compressed MP3 format and they are in his shared folder, they are no longer the authorized copies distributed by Plaintiff."

The key words there are "shared folder" and it's an important distinction. It means that before the RIAA considers someone a criminal, a person has to at least appear to be distributing music.

The Post story, which followed similar pieces in Ars Technica and Wired.com, has spurred scores of other media outlets to repeat the paper's erroneous assertion. Ironically, even typically anti-RIAA blogs, such as Engadget, Gizmodo and TechDirt have jumped in on the side of the RIAA.

"The Washington Post story is wrong," said Jonathan Lamy, an RIAA spokesman. "As numerous commentators have since discovered after taking the time to read our brief, the record companies did not allege that ripping a lawfully acquired CD to a computer or transferring a copy to an MP3 player is infringement. This case is about the illegal distribution of copyrighted songs on a peer-to-peer network, not making copies of legally acquired music for personal use."

After reading Lamy's statement, Fisher didn't back down.

He responded in an e-mail to CNET News.com: "The bottom line is that there is a disconnect between RIAA's publicly stated policy that making a personal copy of a CD is ok and the theory advanced by its lawyers that in fact, transferring music to your computer is an unauthorized act."

He took one more shot before signing off: "Rather than suing its customers and slamming reporters, the RIAA might better spend its energies focusing on winning back the trust of an alienated consumer base."

Still, Fisher received little support from respected and independent copyright experts. William Patry, the copyright guru at Google--not exactly known as a lackey for copyright holders--wrote on his blog that the RIAA is being "unfairly maligned" in the Post story.

Patry does, however, caution that recent statements made by the RIAA and included in Fisher's story reflect the group's growing tendency to use language as a means of control.

Fisher quoted Sony BMG's chief of litigation, Jennifer Pariser, who testified recently in court that "when an individual makes a copy of a song for himself, I suppose we can say he stole a song."

Patry disagreed.

"This new rhetoric of 'everything anyone does without (RIAA) permission is stealing' is well worth noting and well worth challenging at every occasion," Patry wrote. "It is the rhetoric of copyright as an ancient property right, permitting copyright owners to control all uses as a natural right; the converse is that everyone else is an immoral thief."

Greg Sandoval is a former Washington Post staff writer.