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Murderous Vlogging?

Update: Dave took his post down for a while because he felt it was not clear. Please see his comment here and his new post here. I do stand by my general assesment, though, that I don’t think this is anything new. I think this is very similar to the way terrorists and murderers have tried to manipulate the mainstream media before.

Dave Winer is talking about the Virginia Tech massacre and says that we need a code of conduct now that the murderer has sent a package with 23 quicktime videos to NBC. I am still trying to figure out if Dave is serious about this (I assume he is), but here is what he said:

Just heard that the Virginia Tech shooter sent a package of video and pictures to NBC a few days before the incident.

In other words, vlogging comes to mass murder, in ways no one anticipated (or no one I know).

It makes perfect sense, in a senseless way.

Now we’re at a point where even the most radical First Amendment zealots would agree we need a code of conduct.

It’s gone way beyond death threats.

I am not sure this event, as horrible as it is, has a lot to do with vlogging. In many ways, this is as old-school as it gets. He didn’t post his videos on YouTube, he sent them to to a mainstream media outlet. He didn’t video his crimes as he was perpetrating them.

No code of conduct would have changed anything. We already have a code of conduct. This guy didn’t quite stick to it.

So Dave, did it misunderstand your post?

Technorati Tags: vt, virginia tech, blogging, sierra, o’reilly, dave winer, winer

I don’t thikn a code of conduct has anything to do with it, I was trying to make a different point, very quickly and clumsily, and since have edited that bit out.

Whether it’s vlogging or not is an interesting question. Its amateur video, for sure, and it’s highly dramatic stuff. You may also think of it as evil, but that doesn’t change the form of it.

And it’s not the way any of us anticipated people with their own video tools would use them. At least not anyone I know. We’re in uncharted territory now.

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