*sigh*
Any minute now we'll end up with shit like an "official blogging policy" or even worse official bloggers. God, I can't wait for the public and geekizoid infatuation with weblogs to die so those of us that just want to have conversations on the Web can do so without all the attendant hoopla.
Dare, I don't think that's gonna happen.
I had a Microsoft employee tell me yesterday that everytime he writes a message in a newsgroup he puts a disclaimer on his message and he thought that was company policy.
There's a reason that companies hire PR firms, and spend time training employees on how to speak with press, and such.
The problem is weblogs loop around all the official beauracracies that have built up over the years. It has a lot of people freaked out. Both inside and outside Microsoft. As Ray Ozzie's post shows.
We're playing with fire here. We all know it. Personally, it's worth the risk. I just think it's expedient for me to discuss the risk here.
I think the main issue with a Microsoft employee posting disparaging information about Microsoft is not being fired; it's just having to live with what you have written. So imagine you post something saying the such-and-such team at Microsoft is a bunch of yahoos, then the next week you have a meeting with that team.
Now, Microsoft's legal department is really worried about two kinds of posts: what you say about other companies, and what you say about Microsoft.
In both cases they range from possibly inappropriate posts, to potential libel, to NDA/trade secret violations. So talking about another company, you could say "I don't like Sun" or "Real Player doesn't work because their code is buggy" or "We had a secret meeting with AOL last week and you won't believe what I heard". Talking about Microsoft, you could be saying "I think the IE codebase is a large pile of camel dung" or "Steve Ballmer's pants fell off and he wasn't wearing underwear" or "here is the internal schedule for Longhorn". Microsoft probably doesn't care about the mild comments and will fire someone for the NDA issues, so the grey area is really the libelous ones, in particular can Microsoft be sued for them (the author, of course, can be sued for them). In the US the onus in libel cases is on the accuser to prove the defendant knew the information was false, but in some other countires the onus is on the defendant to prove that the information was true.
Microsoft can't really control everything that you post on a private website that you host with your own money and maintain on your own time. Now maybe Microsoft will say you can't host weblogs on winisp.net, but that would sort of defeat the purpose of winisp.net, plus how do you define "weblog" legally. On the other hand, they may impose some rules on blogs on gotdotnet.com.
The other thing is that none of this is new -- Microsoft employees have been posting on Usenet, and occasionally on private websites, since way back when. Some posted disclaimers, some did not. When you say "The problem is weblogs loop around all the official beauracracies that have built up over the years" you are being too blog-centric; it's not weblogs that do that, it's the Internet itself. Weblogs just make it easier for employees to publicly post things and for those things to be read by others, thus more likely that people will read public postings that Microsoft isn't happy with.
So I would predict the senior lawyer on the panel on June 17 will mostly just remind people that Microsoft has rules about public discussion by employees that predate weblogs, and if people just apply those rules, they will be fine. One such rule, I would think, would be to always be very upfront that you are a Microsoft employee. And, don't update your blog from work.
- adam
Wait, "don't update your blog from work"? How are folks supposed to use blogs to narrate their development process? Did you just mean externally visible blogs?
" I just hope I don't end up being one of those guys who has to explain a mistake to Bill."
Eh, when that time comes, just remind him he's the guy taking notes ON PAPER, with A PENCIL, not even a Tablet! ;-P
Well, maybe he'll laugh at that?! Nope ?!
:->
JY.
In response to Michael Bernstein, yes I meant only externally visible blogs. Technically content produced using work resources on work time belongs to Microsoft (if you work at Microsoft I mean, heh heh). So if the company does not have a policy against this, then it would open the company up to more legal action. I doubt Microsoft is going to actually enforce this policy (any more than it prevented Usenet posting from work) but it would want to have it written down somewhere, and make an effort to tell employees.
Someone like Eric Rudder, being a company officer, might have to be more careful. Even a blog done on his own time/resources might be considered "commercial speech" because of his position in the company. I don't know anything about the legalities but there was a case involving Philip Knight from Nike and a letter to the New York Times:
http://www.fortune.com/fortune/
a...,367780,00.html
- adam
Hmm. I hadn't previously considered weblogs as a form of commercial speech. This would seem to be a pretty big problem for people who criticise people (or companies, or their products) that they compete with on their blog.
"I just hope I don't end up being one of those guys who has to explain a mistake to Bill."
I think you'd do well. If you already recognized it as a mistake then you will have already taken action here, yes? And if someone needs to persuade you that it was a mistake, then that's part of life regardless. But if you think, after hearing objections, that you're doing the right thing, then I trust you'll be able to get that idea across...?
jd/mm
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