In October 1954 the Comics Code Authority was formed by the major American comic-book publishers as a ‘voluntary’ method of self-policing. Not coincidentally this was shortly after the furore Doctor Frederick Wertham had successfully created by publishing and publicising Seduction of the Innocent, his quasi-academic book blaming juvenile delinquency of violent comic-books.

The CCA was intended to reassure shop-keepers, parents and politicians that the content being published was “socially responsible” and unlikely to harm its readers, cause them distress or lead to violent crimes. It didn’t work in the short term because, as Wertham himself noted in A Sign for Cain (1966) “Within a few years after the publication of Seduction of the Innocent , twenty-four out of twenty-nine crime-comic- book publishers went out of business”.

Comics could be published without the CCA’s semi-official stamp of approval but any comics that were found it increasingly hard to get distribution, as the stamp effectively enabled parents, retailers and wholesalers to avoid taking any personal responsibility.

It didn’t work in the long term either. In 1971 Stan Lee wrote three issues of Spiderman that were concerned with the downsides of drug addiction. The CCA refused to pass them (because any mention of drugs was forbidden, and the fact that these were heavy-handed anti-drug stories made no difference), and so Lee went ahead anyway. He simply left the seal off the comics and nobody noticed. The resulting coverage damaged the authority of the Code and left Lee looking like the responsible and socially concerned party.

In the short term, then, the seal worked as a fence around a safe harbour. Any comic not in the harbour was perceived as a potential or actual danger. In the longer term, when the original cause celebre had faded from memory, the seal became such an expected part of the environment that it was rendered invisible, and was hidden or removed to almost no public interest whatsoever.

In March 2007, Kathy Sierra, a well-known blogger, IT expert, and conference speaker, was on the receiving end of a series of hostile comments on her and other blogs. Rightly or wrongly she took them seriously, and went public. She claimed she felt her life was in danger, named some of the people she thought might be responsible, and pulled out of a speech at a conference. This caused some public discussion.

This in turn led to Tim O’Reilly writing a long essay in which he advocated a bloggers’ code of conduct. I think that history teaches us that this is completely wrong-headed. I also think that the reasons this is so are self-evident, and need no lengthy explanations. (See above.)

Fortunately, as some comments pointed out, it is simply not going to happen.

Perhaps I should add that I am entirely in favour of people taking responsibility for what they do say or publish, and I believe that that necessarily includes the comments that they allow to be appended to what they do, say or publish. Wading through the comments following Tim O’Reilly’s piece I was genuinely surprised that some other people seemed to find this a difficult concept. What I mean by this is that some posters seemed to feel that they needed to be given a communal set of guidelines that they could apply – that they needed to feel they were moving with the herd.

These are the liberals that Phil Ochs warned us about; the people who will not be defending your right to blog without a seal of approval when the official Blogosphere has made one available to you.

“Finally, ladies and gentlemen, I would like the jury to consider why the defendant – who still claims he has nothing to hide and no deceitful motives – nonetheless went ahead and published without making any attempt to do what all decent folks would do, and do with pride – label the blog as one were civility is enforced.”

While thinking about this I read an entry on Bryan Alexander’s Infocult site, and made a quick comment. He had illustrated his short essay with the symbol of the CCA. Not only did this bring back childhood memories, but it suddenly seemed like exactly the right response.

I am hereby unilaterally awarding myself the approval of this faded entity to remind myself permanently of one small lesson that history teaches us. You can get run over by your own car.

April 10 2007:

Oh dear! Jimmy Wales and Tim O’Reilly have now published a Blogger’s Draft Code of Conduct, complete with two suggested badges for putting onto sites.

One is intended to be put on blogs that “are committed to the Civility Enforced standard: we will not post unacceptable content, and we’ll delete comments that contain it”. This manages to combine a none-too-subtle authoritarianism with a cultural reference that many people outside the USA might find inappropriate at the very least. Look at my blog, I have been deputised…

The other one is intended for sites whose authors shamelessly admit that they are running “an open, uncensored forum. We are not responsible for the comments of any poster, and when discussions get heated, crude language, insults and other “off color” comments may be encountered. Participate in this site at your own risk.”

Is there a subtle allusion to terrorism here, or has the thoughtlessness just been cranked up another gear? Either way it is abundantly clear that any blogs that are not protected by The Sheriff are places where dynamite gets flung around. Gotham City, or Deadwood: the choice is binary.

The good news is that the many, many responses to the post have been overwhelmingly negative. Kathy Sierra herself posted to say that:

This Code of Conduct would have had no effect on what happened to me. I had a comment policy in place, and deleted the threats that came directly to my blog. But if people are determined to hate, harass, intimidate, or threaten you, it’s easy enough to do on other blogs.

I do think that people should be able to have their own comment policy with impunity–I’ve had one clearly stated for the last 6 months–but anyone who would support a code of conduct doesn’t *need* one, and anyone who we *wish* would adopt it never would.

The idea was condescending and dangerous to begin with, and gets more so by the day.