Posted on
March 9, 2010 in
I tried to leave a comment on Texas Lawyer magazine’s Tex Parte Blog. I got this in my email from the Managing Editor of Texas Lawyer:
Thanks so much for taking the time to comment on Texas Lawyer‘s blog. To publish it, I need your written permission, full name and city, all of which will be published with the comment.
Four days later, I got the same message from the Law Editor of Texas Lawyer. I forwarded my mocking response to the first email to her.
Doesn’t leaving a comment on a blog imply permission to publish? If Texas Lawyer doesn’t think so (seriously?), wouldn’t a checkbox on the comment form make more sense?
In the same vein, if you want a commenter’s city, how hard is it to add a line to the comment form asking for it?
I thought I was doing a lot to discourage comments by requiring people to use their actual names, but Tex Parte’s bizarre policy has me beaten by a country mile.
It also smacks of idiocy. Most websites (at least those who have consulted an attorney – LOL) have this requirement amply laid out in their TOU (Terms of Use) or at least in a footnote for the poster and a requirements check (via submission program) on the submission.
What it does demonstrate is the old adage of “just because you can doesn’t mean you should remains true.” Lawyers while very bright (for the most part) ought defer to us folks whose business is all things web-like – or at least pay for a second opinion LOL