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The ethics of live-blogging unpublished work?

Brian Leiter

David Velleman (NYU) writes:

The live-blogging of Martha Nussbaum's Locke lectures would be a good occasion for a discussion of the professional ethics of this practice. The lectures have not been published. Copies of the lectures are accessible online to Oxford students and faculty, and others can request them with an online application, but they are not otherwise available. In any case, I am raising the question not only about this particular instance, in which there is limited distribution of the lectures, but also about cases in which material presented in person has not been distributed in writing at all. Is it ethical to publish someone's ideas before he or she has published them, without obtaining permission and granting an opportunity for correction? Is it no longer possible to present work in progress without having someone else's version of it published before one has had a chance to revise and publish it oneself?

Thoughts from readers?

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34 responses to “The ethics of live-blogging unpublished work?”

  1. David Estlund

    David (V.), I agree it's a questionable practice. Few would think it ok to stream the audio or video of the proceedings without permission, or to record it and then post it (which is not to say no one would do it). It's true, many talks are "open to the public," but the speaker has a reasonable expectation that the audience will be limited to those in attendance. I'm not saying this or other bloggers are behaving badly, since we just don't have developed norms about such things. But I'd favor a norm that says that material should not be exposed to the public unless the author explicitly permits it. Of course there are grey areas: may I recount what I heard at a public lecture without permission from the speaker? Well, perhaps not in a very public setting. How about in a talk to a small audience? I'm not sure. Glad you raised this issue.

    Reply
  2. James C. Klagge

    I guess that's why Wittgenstein was reluctant to let students take notes during his course lectures.

    Reply
  3. Matt Lister

    I remember some old discussions on this blog about the topic. Here and here, for example. (Note that some of the links in those old posts are no longer any good.)

    But, perhaps the norms and expectations have changed significantly in the 10+ years since those old posts. I'm at least somewhat sympathetic to the idea that, if proper disclaimers and warnings are properly posted, such things can be a net positive, though of course there is no guarantee. Given that, it's probably best, and usually easy, to ask permission before doing any live-blogging, at least in most cases.

    Reply
  4. Richard Yetter Chappell

    I've always assumed that public lectures are "fair game" for further (including online) discussion. In general, the dissemination and discussion of interesting new ideas strikes me as a significant intrinsic good, and one that we should want to see encouraged rather than discouraged. I don't see any comparable harm on the other side: it's not as though anyone is going to take a blogger's rough summary as canonical.

    Some related issues are, I think, less clear cut. In what manner (if at all) is it ok to blog about non-public presentations? Or class discussions? Thinking about this in early grad school, I came up with the following:
    http://www.philosophyetc.net/2008/11/blogging-and-protecting-innocent.html

    "I often find that interesting ideas arise in discussion with others. But this suggests a possible tension between three prima facie legitimate interests:

    (1) Blogging about interesting ideas,
    (2) Giving credit where it's due,
    (3) Privacy interests.

    I tend to assume that prepared talks (e.g. conference presentations) are considered 'public', so there it's unambiguously appropriate to identify the speaker by (full) name — much as if I were discussing a published paper.

    But I think unprepared or 'off the cuff' remarks (e.g. questions from the audience, informal class discussions, etc.) come with the reasonable expectation that they will not be attached to one's "permanent (Googleable) record". So I tend to balance 'credit' and 'privacy' in such cases by using first names only, or perhaps merely initials. That way anyone who was part of the original discussion can easily follow along (and I suppose an interested reader could probably make an educated guess as to the identities involved), but it's protected from the all-seeing eye of Google, and so from third-party general searches.

    Does that seem like a reasonable default practice to follow?"

    Reply
  5. Tsung-Hsing Ho

    I'm not sure whether it's ethical. But suppose it's unethical for the reasons DV gives. Doesn't it follow that publishing posthumous works without the author's permission more unethical, since the author might keep them private through her lifetime?

    Reply
  6. Matt Lister

    Well, my links obviously failed to go in. The discussion I had in mind was this:

    http://leiterreports.typepad.com/blog/2003/11/more_on_bloggin.html

    and this:

    http://leiterreports.typepad.com/blog/2003/11/jonathan_wolffs.html

    Reply
  7. David Matheson

    I too agree that it's a questionable practice. There's no easy move from the appropriateness of those present at a public lecture knowing what a speaker said in the lecture to the appropriateness of anyone in any other public venue knowing what she said in the lecture. (Compare: It's of course fine for those in the quad who happen to look my way as I walk across it to know that I'm walking, what I look like as I do so, etc. It hardly follows that it's fine for anyone in any other public venue to know such things (if, e.g., someone in the quad were to make a video of my movements and then post it in public fora online.))

    Generalizing on the excellent insights of Helen Nissenbaum's work on privacy in public (and privacy as contextual integrity of information) might be helpful here.

    Reply
  8. Christopher Morris

    My first reaction similar to Dave's. However, the technology or technologies are evolving so quickly that it's hard to say what norms are appropriate as many won't be stable (i.e., be sustained by a practice). For instance, if lectures like these are widely discussed on the internet, then it will be hard for a norm forbidding internet discussions to be stable; defection is too easy. Different norms will presumably develop. Perhaps authors will be asked for permission to allow wider discussion. If not granted, the audience would be asked not to write to anyone about it. Not sure a stable practice will sustain this norm. Perhaps the inevitable effect will be that authors will have to be more cautious with public presentations of work in progress.

    The internet changes a lot. I urge colleagues to consider their university email notes to be public. It's not just the NSA not far down the road from here. In a few years universities as well as others will have easy access to our emails and many will live to regret the unkind words they uttered about their chair/dean/provost. Public lectures may go the same way.

    Reply
  9. j.

    sharing work in progress with disciplinary colleagues is one thing, easily signaled as such by the way it's shared.

    but lecturing is publishing (i.e. making public in the relevant senses).

    especially lecturing in one of 'the world's most distinguished lecture series' at oxford by a scholar at the top level of the profession.

    if you have any trepidation about committing thoughts to even minimal public exposure before you get your chance to word them and print them in exactly the manner you desire, then maybe you have placed undue importance on the latter to the detriment of the former? and could let up a little? so that philosophers could just talk a little more?

    Reply
  10. Eric Schliesser

    If the speaker asks not to quote or circulate their views (as sometimes appears on drafts of papers), then one ought not blog about them. But I would think that the presumption is that people are going to discuss ideas presented at a talk privately and sometimes publicly.

    Reply
  11. Jacob Williamson

    Well, I didn't foresee sparking this. I have a lot of sympathy with the worries expressed in the thread, but David Estlund's comment highlights where the problem has arisen:

    "Of course there are grey areas: may I recount what I heard at a public lecture without permission from the speaker? Well, perhaps not in a very public setting. How about in a talk to a small audience? I'm not sure."

    Indeed, I was blogging predominantly with friends who have since left Oxford, but expressed interest in the lectures, in mind. My blog doesn't have any established audience per se. So I very much saw it as extending little beyond a conversation. If I'd considered better the possibility that it could be picked up on in this way and attract such attention, I would have thought much harder about posting.

    For now, I'm removing my notes and I'm contacting Professor Nussbaum to apologise. I'll certainly stop if that is her wish.

    BL COMMENT: For what it's worth, I thought it was nice that you were blogging the lectures, and you did a good job on the first one (which I was familiar with), which is why I posted a link.

    Reply
  12. Steven Hales

    If we follow Eric Schliesser's advice, there will be no blogging about the Aeneid, or almost anything by Kafka. Both Virgil and Kafka asked that their manuscripts be burned and unpublished after their deaths.

    Reply
  13. Daniel A. Kaufman

    Live Blogging is a form of reporting. Given that the person is speaking in public, I don't see the problem. Politicians' speeches are live broadcast, written about, live-blooged, etc., "without having been published."

    Nussbaum is not divulging state secrets. She is presenting arguments and opinions on philosophical topics. What is there to "protect"?

    Seems pretty precious to complain about reporting on a famous person's public lecture in a famous place.

    Reply
  14. Jonathan Jenkins Ichikawa

    I have a hard time seeing the concern. My assumption would be that anybody giving a philosophy talk is interested in having his or her ideas discussed. So I'm agreeing with Richard Chappell about talks, but I'll take it a step further and extend it to less structured/planned environments like seminars, too. Of course if somebody gets confused and says something dumb, it'd be mean-spirited and plausibly immoral to make a point of broadcasting that fact to the world — one should use one's common sense — but if an interesting idea or argument comes up in a seminar, a Q&A, or a talk — it seems to me the most natural thing in the world to cite it and make use of it in one's future relevant work. The alternatives, it seems to me, are to (a) use the point without citation, or (b) pretend that you've never thought of the point, even though it's relevant to your current work. Both alternatives seem to me intellectually dishonest.

    Reply
  15. Matt DeStefano

    I had the same reaction as Professor Chappell. If the lectures are public, I think it is a service to the rest of the discipline to live-blog them. It should be recognized that the live-blogger will not perfectly communicate the entire content of the talk, but one would hope that those who wish to engage in discussion would be able to realize this.

    Reply
  16. Corey C

    I could've possibly seen Locke from a different angle, now I won't or I'll get it from somewhere else. I don't see anything being gained here by its removal. Now only a small number of people remain privy to this information, instead of a larger audience. Isn't that the problem? Any public lecture ought to be streamed anyways if the tools are available, it's 2014. I certainly wouldn't have had the chance to see Prf. Leiter's lectures in person, but thanks to the internet they have become supplementary material to Prf. Leiter's books and essays, thus helping me to understand his views on Nietzsche all the better (not to mention I have a preference for visual and auditory learning).

    However, asking for approval first generally seems more ethical and courteous. Some revisions could be in order but you always risk ruining your work George Lucas style.

    As for private notes released posthumously, it depends on their relevance to the thinker's larger body of work. I find Nietzsche's unpublished work worthy of being seen, at least to give us some insight on what he was thinking about and what he possibly thought was just rubbish, hence remaining unpublished. Reading love letters and such seems somewhat vicarious, but it does enrich our historical understanding of how past generations lived. You can't be offended if you're dead.

    Reply
  17. Eric Schliesser

    I hope Steven Hales's friends are more ethical than Max Brod was.

    Reply
  18. r

    I agree with Jonathan Jenkins Ichikawa: sharing ideas without allowing people to cite them puts those people in an unfair situation. They cannot use or build upon the ideas without citing them, because that would be serious scholarly misconduct. But if the idea is sufficiently interesting and relevant, then it is also unfair to ask them to simply not use it at all until you've fully worked out whatever version you're ready to publish: you don't get to call 'dibs' on ideas like that. Coincidentally, I think the same applies not just to talks, but to manuscripts posted with the "only cite with permission" disclaimers.

    Reply
  19. David Velleman

    My apologies to Jacob, by the way, for making him the target of what should have been a general discussion of the topic. He was following what has become conventional in the discipline — unfortunately, in my view — but he certainly isn't to blame.

    Reply
  20. Daniel A. Kaufman

    I don't understand this. You're not seriously suggesting that it would have been better had Brod allowed some of the greatest works of 20th century literature to be destroyed, are you?

    Reply
  21. Mary Higgins

    This is a problem across disciplines. The one I am most familiar with personally is in regards to stand up comedy. Comedians have always played at clubs to work out material. An audience is necessary to discern the worthiness of a joke – and the flow of a series of them. Today, however, audience members so often record the performance with their phones and post it on youtube, a comedian's material is released before it is fully formed.

    Perhaps in the case of academia and blogging, legal means can be utilized. In the case of comedy, that is not feasible. So, they adjust their expectations and adapt – a practice that never fails, across disciplines.

    Reply
  22. T

    There is of course a huge difference between recording and publishing a literal transcript of what someone says or photographs of slides or recording a video of a talk, which is something else entirely, and just talking about what one thinks they said or are saying (via the internet or in person). I don't think there is anything wrong with talking, online or in person, about what you think someone apparently argued or your take on their views, even if it's from a couple minutes ago.

    I often ask people what they thought of talks and what the talk was about when they go to different ones than I did at conferences. Seems OK. I think it is fine also to text someone and ask how the talk is going and have them reply while they are in the talk. This, and analogous cases like making blog posts or talking via twitter about something you think someone argues or your impression of the upshot of what they're saying, seems totally fine.

    Again though, it seems to me that it is something else entirely to record verbatim a conversation and then publish it, like with a hidden tape recorder used without consent (in a talk at a private or public event) or transcribing someone's talk and posting or quoting it without permission. This seems to be at best equivalent to quoting an email or draft of a paper as if representative without permission, which is something different from blogging about a thing you think someone meant or your interpretation of a talk.

    Which one is "live blogging" supposed to be? Just talking about what you think someone argued in a talk or is arguing in a talk? Or is it supposed to be publishing something equivalent to a literal transcription or quoting a draft or email without permission? Likely both sorts fall within the idea of "live blogging," and as others have said this is really the ethically relevant sort of difference. As long as it's someone's interpretation and not a transcript or verbatim, it seems totally fine. Or, of course, saying that someone said X when they didn't, obviously. I'm having a hard time seeing the ethical significance of the issue of live blogging itself.

    Reply
  23. David Velleman

    @T says: "I often ask people what they thought of talks and what the talk was about when they go to different ones than I did at conferences. Seems OK. I think it is fine also to text someone and ask how the talk is going and have them reply while they are in the talk. This, and analogous cases like making blog posts or talking via twitter about something you think someone argues or your impression of the upshot of what they're saying, seems totally fine."

    Blog posts are not analogous to conversation and texting. To post something on a blog is to make a permanent record of it and make it available to the entire world — in short, to publish it. Of course you're entitled to text someone during a talk or tell them about it afterwards. What you're not entitled to do with author's ideas is to publish them before the author has a chance to.

    Reply
  24. David Velleman

    @Richard Yetter Chappell says: "In general, the dissemination and discussion of interesting new ideas strikes me as a significant intrinsic good, and one that we should want to see encouraged rather than discouraged."

    The dissemination and discussion of interesting new ideas will only be discouraged if members of an audience are allowed to pre-publish participants' ideas, since everyone will be inhibited from trying out ideas in public. The free exchange of ideas in our discipline depends on mutual trust. Speakers assume that they are speaking to the present audience in their own voice — not to the entire world through a reporter. If that assumption no longer holds, all of us will say only what are willing to have permanently recorded for the whole world to read. That's not an environment for the discussion of interesting new ideas.

    Reply
  25. E.

    It strikes me that "public lectures" is a category that includes different kinds of activities serving different kinds of ends.

    Sometimes we give a talk to test out an idea and play off the audience's reaction. The freedom to present something before it is fully formed seems essential to the activity here, and it does seem that extensive publicly-accessible discussion could chill that practice.

    On the other hand, some very prestigious, large lectures really do seem closer to a form of publication than to a form of brainstorming. I would put the Locke lectures in this category. In that case, it seems to me that the author is opening themselves to public discussion, and restricting that discussion seems antithetical to the purposes of the event.

    Reply
  26. Daniel A. Kaufman

    Live blogging is like reporting, in the sense of news-reporting. I don't see why someone should need permission to report live on a presentation that's being given in public. Were reporters and journalists banned from attending the talk?

    Reply
  27. Daniel A. Kaufman

    "Speakers assume that they are speaking to the present audience in their own voice — not to the entire world through a reporter."

    I don't know that this is true. When I delivered a paper at the annual meeting of the British Society of Aesthetics, I don't know that I thought to myself, "Thank God there's no one here from Philosophy News, to report on what I'm saying….to a public audience."

    But I am absolutely certain that there is no such expectation—and if there is, it's unreasonable—for a public intellectual and celebrity like Martha Nussbaum to not be reported on, when she makes public speeches.

    Our profession faces a number of really grave ethical challenges, from the treatment of women, to the treatment of adjuncts and per-course faculty, to the concentration of wealth, power, and access, in a handful of institutions. That someone reported on Martha Nussbaum's speech doesn't strike me as one of them.

    Reply
  28. Michael Boyle

    I agree with Ichikawa, Kaufman and others in terms of my puzzlement at being troubled over this and the notion that public philosophy lectures are now to be treated as akin to Bilderberg meetings. If the tension is between wanting to engage the public versus a proprietary notion re: one's ideas, perhaps it would be helpful to remember that by its very nature philosophy is a public enterprise (or ought to be). To complain in terms of public lectures of too much attention at a time when we would all acknowledge (I hope) that our current social and political difficulties are in desperate, desperate need of the contributions of engaged intellectuals seems a bit dotty. What's the worst that can happen? Someone misunderstands a point you made that you then make sure and correct in the published version (or in an update to the streamed video), now alert to the possibility that this may be a weakness in terms of your delivery of the argument? That the hoi polloi have the temerity to join in the discussion and perhaps benefit from a little rigorous thinking? The problem, it seems to me, is exactly the opposite. We need to find *more* ways to engage the public, not less. With all due respect to others on the board who disagree, I have to concur with Cory C.: *any* public lecture ought to be streamed if possible (and yes, it's always best to ask, but public lectures should be assumed to be public- otherwise put a sign on the door). And in terms of technology and from the view of an early Millennial/Late X-er like me, this seems like a discussion at least 20 years past its shelf life.

    Reply
  29. Bill Wringe

    If we're going to discuss this, can we also discuss the ethics of making transcripts of a set of lectures available only to a small section of the scholarly community (eg, people lucky enough to be at Oxford), even though any work in the same area will almost certainly now be deemed unpublishable if it does not reference them? (As, for example, work on names in fiction was unpublishable if it didn't reference Kripke's 1973 Locke lectures, even though these didn't become available to the public until last year.) Because that seems to be the other side of the same coin, and arguably more problematic.

    Reply
  30. Bill Wringe

    Is it also unethical for an author to cite, in their published work, comments or questions raised by someone in the audience at such an event? It seems to me that the same considerations apply here as to blogging about a talk. But no-one at all thinks there's a problem with this.

    Reply
  31. Dhananjay Jagannathan

    Bill Wringe says "If we're going to discuss this, can we also discuss the ethics of making transcripts of a set of lectures available only to a small section of the scholarly community (eg, people lucky enough to be at Oxford), even though any work in the same area will almost certainly now be deemed unpublishable if it does not reference them?"

    Just in case people are confused by this (apt enough as a historical point, perhaps), the manuscript that forms the basis of Professor Nussbaum's present Locke Lectures are available to anyone who is willing to e-mail the Philosophy Faculty using the form at the bottom of this page:

    http://www.philosophy.ox.ac.uk/lectures/john_locke_lectures

    And handouts and in many cases recordings from the past few years' worth are available here:

    http://www.philosophy.ox.ac.uk/lectures/john_locke_lectures/past_lectures

    It's also been my experience that many professional philosophers are quite willing to send one copies of unpublished work, with the usual proscriptions on citation and quotation.

    Reply
  32. David Velleman

    @Dhananjay Jagannathan: Yes, the lectures are available upon request, and many authors are willing to share their unpublished presentations — which is why there is no reason to live-blog them.

    That said, @E. is right that there are important differences among events, and I shouldn't have directed my remarks to the Locke Lectures. If those lectures are open to the press, then they are open to live-blogging as well. (Renewed apologies to Jacob Williamson.) But as I said in my email to BL, I took these lectures as an occasion for raising the question about the practice in general. These days, many workshops and smaller conferences are also live-blogged, and those are clearly instances in which speakers are assuming their presentations won't be disseminated more widely.

    @Michael Boyle can't be right that this discussion is 20 years past its shelf life, since the Web is barely 20 years old. The Internet has raised ethical issues that philosophers have been very slow to address. It's about time that the ethics of information became a mainstream area of applied ethics. I don't think that's dotty.

    Are these issues less important than others in our discipline (@Daniel A. Kaufman)? Well, some of us think that new technologies for the dissemination of scholarship are crucial to the future of inquiry, and that working out reasonable conventions for the use of these technologies is a worthwhile project. In any case, ethical issues are not in competition. If they were, none of the problems facing the profession of philosophy would be high on the list.

    Reply
  33. Daniel A. Kaufman

    I am glad to see that you agree with those of us who think the live blogging of Martha Nussbaum's Locke lectures was perfectly appropriate.

    It is true that ethical issues are not in competition, in the abstract, but the energy and will to confront them are in relatively short supply. A constant hammering on moral trivia–unfortunately common, today–causes people to grow morally weary and disinclined.

    As for your last remark, given that some of the problems facing our profession include sex discrimination and assault, I suspect that they would remain on the radar, even if we stopped worrying about the propriety of live-blogging philosophy lectures.

    Reply
  34. Corinne Squire

    Interesting to see this discussion – Nussbaum will be taking part in an event on 'Living with the cuts' at the British Library later this month, with others from for instance UNICEF, community groups, and the Tavistock Clinic (see http://store.ioe.ac.uk/browse/extra_info.asp?compid=1&modid=2&catid=42&prodid=281 to get a sense of the context). The BL will, with speaker and audience permission, record the whole event, as it always does. It's also standard for audience members to live-tweet from such conferences. We will in addition inform speakers and other attenders that some press are in attendance. I think it will be well recognised that the contributions are not published papers, and that the conference is not an event at which ethically problematic materials (for instance, from research or clinical practice) should be presented. The intellectual energy and engagement fostered by social media in relation to an event like this seems to me a good thing.

    Corinne Squire

    Reply

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