[Imc-web] More on an Editting Request

[Mike Lehman]

I have altered the contents of the email below in responding to this 
request. Basically, I think it would be OK to alter the article (20160 
on the old site) by substituting initials for the name in question, but 
even this is going to require some email exchanges, which could only 
make the situation worse from her POV. She is already expanding the 
scope of her requests, seemingly oblivious to the fact that this tends 
to aggravate the situation.
Mike Lehman

Dear Ms. P.,
Responding to your points in order:

1. I really doubt that you have been seriously misquoted by Ms. Doggett. 
The quote is very bland and I really do not see how it could be twisted 
into something controversial, even if it is not exact. In fact, 
exactitude is not the issue, misrepresentation is and I just don't see 
that there is any issue with that. I happen to engage in the study of 
memory as part of my work. I am fairly sure that Ms. Doggett's quote of 
you shortly after the event happened is at least as, if not more 
accurate, than your own recall of it at this point. The fact that you 
merely make a claim of inaccuracy, rather than specifically disputing 
any of the quote itself, along with your original request that indicated 
no inaccuracies, leads me to believe that you seem to believe that 
rephrasing your request is sufficient to justify the edit. I am not 
convinced on this point and you also seem to have made no effort to 
contact Ms. Doggett.

As for altering our email archive, this will be difficult, if not 
impossible. We do most of our work online and our archives are part of 
our policy of transparency, as well as being one of the inevitable 
features of the internet anyway. Once again, I think you are asking 
others to take responsibility for your own decisions to engage in 
communication with reporters and others involved with IMC. It is also a 
very basic fact of the internet that virtually everything on it is 
logged and stored somewhere. You can't unscramble an egg.

2. As I noted in my previous email, speaking with reporters and even 
ordinary individuals on the street can lead to your name being in all 
sorts of places on the internet. There is nothing unethical, illegal, or 
questionable about this happening. Your own naivety about how the 
internet, as well as how society, operates seems to be more the issue 
here than your irrelevant and legally unsupportable claims that you need 
to give specific permission before you name appears on the internet 
under circumstances such as these. You do have the personal right to 
refuse to give you name and to avoid sending email to others. After 
you've made the decision to do either, your claims are overridden by the 
fact that you've made the decision to self-identify.

Also, as I've already mentioned, content on our site remains the 
property of those who post or author it. There are a number of reasons 
for that, but among them is the fact that a website that is open to the 
posting of news and information cannot verify the accuracy of such 
postings. We leave it up to other users to  dispute any inaccuracies  
via comments to the original posting. We do not want, and specifically 
disclaim, any responsibility for "*the content and validity of information".

*I am willing to suggest to the other editors that the archived article 
be altered to include only your initials, as this seems to be a 
reasonable compromise that does not alter the content in a substantive 
way. However, to do so, I will need to contact them via email, identify 
your name as needing editing, and this will likely result in further 
archiving of your name. And, no, we will not make pointless attempts to 
chase all those links down to edit them after the fact. I don't mean to 
sound stubborn about your request, but I really don't think you 
appreciate how impossible a task trying to remove anything from the 
internet really is due to the technology involved.
Mike Lehman
**
Ms. P. wrote:
>
>
> Dear Mr Lehman,
>
> thanks a lot for your response. Allow me to clarify my point, if it 
> didn t become too clear in my previous attempts.
>
> I do not "simply want my name off the internet", i want it off this 
> article because
>
> 1. I indeed *have been misquoted*. I ve talked to the author while 
> being arrested. No pens or paper are allowed into arrest. Ms 
> Doggett had to write her quotes down from memory after her release 
> and I did definitely not say what later appeared in the article. I 
> mentioned 2 keywords, the meaning *does not match* with what I 
> initially said.
>
> Along with an altering/shortening of my name i d like to ask for a 
> removing of  chambana net list message editted out 
> <http://lists.chambana.%0A%20net/mailman/archive/imc-web/2005-November/001550.html>too 
> since it refers exactly to the said article and contains my name* and 
> email address* *too*. I did not know I was responding on a public 
> messageboard.
>
> 2. I have *not and never at any point given permission to my name 
> being published* on the *_internet_*.
>
>  
>
> I understand your point and argument of freedom of press and 
> appreciate it greatly, but in this case I see a conflict between my 
> personal rights and freedom of the press and I do not see a violation 
> or infringement of freedom of the press if my name is being shortened 
> to my initials or replaced, yet indeed a violation of my personal 
> rights prevailing here.
>
> -Shortening my name to my initials (I am not asking to remove or alter 
> the quote even) *would not affect th e content, hence freedom of the 
> press* in any way. 
>
> My quote does not in no way influence the sense of the article either, 
> in fact it is totally obsolete to the core theme of the article.
>
> -This article *is from 2004*. It s already in the archives and does 
> not deal with any current topic any more.
>
> (Lastly, I d like to say that the editorial team of the website is 
> still *responsible for the content and validity of information* on it 
> too, not the author alone. And should at least have contact 
> information of the authors it is publishing articles from. ) 
>
> Mr Lehman, thanks a lot for your understanding. I hope we can find a 
> mutually satisfactory solution and I apologize for my claim to delete 
> the article, since it is absolutely not in my interest to infringe 
> freedom of press in any way.
>
> Ms. P.
>