Are IM conversations sacrosanct?

Looks like I unwittingly upset my (former?) mate Tony Goodson by posting our recent IM conversation. I just thought the process of being invited to write a couple of pages in the 100Bloggers book was, in itself, an interesting process. Should I have not posted the entire IM conversation? I actually got blasted by Belinda when she read me calling Jennifer Rice "hot". Hmmm. Lessons to be learned. Should IM conversations be sacrosanct? You read the IM text... do you think it should have stayed private? Interested in your thoughts.

Sorry Tony. Mea culpa.

Comments

[Kahlia]

hmm.... im conversations are never really secure now are they so how can they be considered private anyway?. Having said that my thoughts is never publish anything that
1. you wouldn't want the whole world to see - this is the world wide web !!! hello!!
2. you dont have the permission of the other party to publish( one could argue you informed Tony that you would post YOUR im conversations from now on and you could read into his comment that he was cool with that and maybe kind of consented but his comment was probably more male bravado and joke in "standing by every bitchy comment he made " as opposed to real consent cause he probably didnt think you would be... serious...Tony in future say straight out NO .. I WILL SUE YOUR ASS.. if you dont want your im conversations published.. its much clearer
3. you know your wife or "life partner" would be pissed off about if she read it... ( personally I would rather my boyfriend/husband etc was open about who and what he thought was hot or not.... but i would certainly expect that he thought i was a bigger babe or hotter..and told me so... OFTEN
4. is driven by ego.. sometimes we just wanna show the world we are so super cool and we wanna brag about US...and thats ok, its only human, but you probably want to temper that by taking the time to reflect on what the ramifications would be if you did publish an im conversation before you went ahead and did just that
4. you assume no one you know is ever gonna read ? well Tony and Belinda read it so......
5.you havent got the money to defend in court if you were sued ( especially by other parties refferenced in the im conversation - dont assume the web is a litigious no go zone.. that would be naive...

other than that you should pretty much say whatever the hell you want!!!!

[Darren Rowse]

Note to self - never to talk to Cameron Reilly on IM :-)

Man, if I had a policy of publishing IM conversations I could do some serious damage to a few people! I vote IM is private unless permission is given....

[Daniel]

hmm well, it'd be an interesting legal question. IIRC for instance the copyright on a (paper) letter is owned by the author, even though the media is owned by the recipient. Perhaps the copyright on an IM chat is owned jointly by the people involved.

In any case, it's probably polite to ask all participants if it's okay to publish it.

[Cameron]

as "Kahlia" pointed out, I did let Tony know I planned on posting the conversation and he didn't object. But, in retrospect, I should have limited what I posted to the conversation regarding the book and left out any mention of other people to protect Tony's reputation. I don't think anything he said was derogatory, we were mucking about, and Jennifer Rice has been nice enough to post comments on his site saying she's cool with it. But yeah. Lesson learned. The other lesson is "don't post after 1am".

[MattyT]

My opinon is that any conversation ought to be private unless otherwise agreed upon...

For example, if I send an email I wouldn't expect it to be posted to a website. The intended audience is completely different.

Of course, common sense applies. If you think that something that we discuss is harmless, or I wouldn't mind, then go ahead and exercise your judgement and do what you will. But be aware that if I don't think it's harmless, or DO mind, then I have every right to be pissed!!