Totally agree. Private convo is private convo. Hear, hear ...
It may be helpful to recall that a useful guideline in such matters are the _expectations_ of the authors/speakers. It is certainly true, as Barry pointed out, that the boundaries between the private and the public are often ambiguous and shifting - but one way of drawing at least an ethical line in the sand is to consider these expectations. So - presuming many of us would _expect_
side comments over dinner and in informal groups to be private in the sense that publishing them beyond the immediate circle of conversants would indeed require permission, then a prima facie position would be: indeed!
Another way of getting at it might be a version of the Golden Rule and/or (feminist/Habermasian) perspective-taking: how would I feel if someone did this to me - i.e., published such ostensibly private comments without my permission. Either way, I'm with Barry and Paula. Indeed, I'd be p***ed. And you can quote me (smile). It _is_ interesting that this has come up on the same day that Bernhard Debatin raised exactly the question: is anyone doing anything regarding the ethics of blogs? To my knowledge, no. We had a brief discussion of this on the ethics working group a few months back, but only some preliminary considerations. One of the points was that the AoIR ethical guidelines were oriented towards _research_ ethics - whereas what seems to be going on here are questions about ethical issues within blogging as such. Certainly interesting and important ones! See you in Chicago - -- charles Charles Ess Distinguished Research Professor, Interdisciplinary Studies Drury University 900 N. Benton Ave. Voice: 417-873-7230 Springfield, MO 65802 USA FAX: 417-873-7435 Home page: http://www.drury.edu/ess/ess.html Co-chair, CATaC: http://www.it.murdoch.edu.au/catac/ Professor II, Globalization and Applied Ethics Programmes Norwegian University of Science and Technology NO-7491 Trondheim, Norway http://www.anvendtetikk.ntnu.no/pres/bridgingcultures.php Exemplary persons seek harmony, not sameness. -- Analects 13.23