[donaldscrankshaw] Donald: A blogger's moral dilemma

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Posted by Donald:
A blogger's moral dilemma
http://www.donaldscrankshaw.com/posts/1209095096.shtml


   So, let me pose a moral dilemma. As you may know, I use Sitemeter for
   my blog. This feature-rich webcounter allows me to do all sorts of
   things. For one, it keeps track of where visitors are coming from
   (their IP addresses, ISPs, and location) and what brought them here
   (links from other locations, web searches--what's called referrals). I
   like taking a peek at this information, especially the referrals,
   since it lets me see who's linking to me and what web searches bring
   people here. Probably the most interesting category are the web
   searches. Some people, after coming here for a web search, find
   exactly the right thing. If you're looking for information on
   [1]Ezekiel's vision or the [2]difference between Evangelicalism and.
   Fundamentalism, I've got you covered. Sometimes, though, the weirdest
   searches lead people to things that I've never talked about before.
   For example, "[3]Did Jesus ride a unicorn to Babylon?" I'd never
   addressed that question before someone's search led them here. All
   that really means is that I had the terms Jesus, unicorn, and Babylon
   on the same archive page at one point.
   And then, there are the searches that are frankly disturbing. Some
   time ago, I noticed a someone coming to my blog via a search of
   something like "How do I kill my roommate?" Now, obviously I don't
   have any instructions on roommate killing on my blog. The question,
   though, is what should I do with a search like this? On the one hand,
   I could just respect my visitor's privacy and ignore it. People do
   crazy searches all the time. As a writer of suspense stories, I do
   more than most: I once spent several hours doing web searches on
   stabbing people in the lungs. It's possible that the visitor was doing
   something similar, or academic research on the availability of such
   information on the internet. Do I really wish to impugn someone's
   reputation, or land him [generic masculine pronoun here--it could have
   been a woman] in serious legal trouble, based on a web search? On the
   other hand, if he's really looking for a way to kill someone, wouldn't
   I be morally responsible if I had the ability to prevent it and failed
   to do so? I do have that means, after all. Sitemeter tells me when he
   made the search, the IP address of the computer he made it from, and
   his ISP, in this case a university in another country. All I have to
   do is inform the university, and they can probably tell who made the
   search via who was logged into that computer at that time. So what do
   I do?
   As I said, this happened some time ago, so I made the decision within
   a few hours of noticing the search:

   ([4]show)

   I did, in fact, notify the university via their internet abuse
   notification website. I made it clear that I had no knowledge of
   whether the visitor to my site had actual illegal intent, and that the
   search could be entirely innocent. If they did their jobs properly,
   they would have checked to see whether that student had a history of
   disciplinary problems or if there had been reports of difficulties
   between him and his roommate, and maybe talked to the two of them.
   Then again, they could have just ignored my report. Or they could have
   overreacted and expelled him or charged him with conspiracy to commit
   murder or something. I'm hoping they did their jobs properly, but it
   was out of my hands at that point.
   ([5]hide)

   So, did I do the right thing? I'm pretty sure I did, but I would love
   to hear the thoughts of others.

References

   1. http://www.donaldscrankshaw.com/posts/1180130374.shtml
   2. http://www.donaldscrankshaw.com/posts/1083614605.shtml
   3. http://www.donaldscrankshaw.com/posts/1163135685.shtml
   4. file://localhost/var/www/powerblogs/donaldscrankshaw/posts/1209095096.html
   5. file://localhost/var/www/powerblogs/donaldscrankshaw/posts/1209095096.html