Stubbleblog

The latest in the dust-up between Tom Raftery and O’Reilly is a group of trolls telling Marc Hedlund to can the puff pieces until Tim O’Reilly can return. Apparently O’Reilly needs to shut down it’s publishing program until Tim can earn the forgiveness of Raftery’s cronies.

My take: O’Reilly was unprepared for an influx of trolls and vitriol, and because of that Tom Raftery has completely escaped culpability for misreading a cease and desist letter, then misrepresenting a followup letter, then villifying Cory Doctorow in spite of the facts. Most important, he’s completely escaped blame for picking a name for his conference that was already taken.

The O’Reilly/CMP conference is called “Web 2.0 Conference.” IT@Cork’s conference is called “Web 2.0 Half-Day Conference.” It’s common sense and common courtesy: pick a different name.

CMP, on behalf of itself and O’Reilly, sent IT@Cork a cease-and-desist letter that has drawn a lot of fire for asking IT@Cork not to use a similar title as the established conference. Thus far, Raftery–and the debate–have focused on whether anyone can use the term “Web 2.0.” But they’re ignoring this key paragraph of the C&D:

“It has come to my attention that you have scheduled a conference entitled Web 2.0 for June 8 2006. Through this title you are misrepresenting and recipients are given the direct and false impression that you are providing them with CMP’s event.”

In other words, the reason he’s being contacted is because he’s running a conference called Web 2.0, not merely because he’s running a conference that contains the term Web 2.0. Tom would have more credibility if he were organizing a conference with an original name.

Did Raftery make an honestly misread the letter or is he posting intentionally inflamatory remarks in order to draw attention to himself? I thought honest mistake until I read his two followup posts.

First he writes of “O’Reilly’s mean-spirited response.” Mean-spirited? IT@Cork received a second letter offering to let the organization go on with its conference–name unchanged–but reserving CMP/O’Reilly’s rights to the term. He can disagree with their rights, but I have a hard seeing the meanness in the letter. The comments on O’Reilly’s Radar blog, including accusations that Tim’s a child molester, that certain employees are hemroids and need to be fired, that all O’Reilly books should be burned, those seem mean-spirited. The O’Reilly/CMP communications are professional and business-like. If O’Reilly is wrong on any points, Raftery’s accusations are preventing a thoughtful discussion of those points.

And while Raftery says in his post that it’s unlikely IT@Cork will sign the second letter from CMP/O’Reilly, he’s telling the New York Times that everything is fine and that he appreciates the response he got from O’Reilly:

“Because of Web 2.0 and blogging, I was able to put up a post and have this large multimedia organization apologize and turn around and say, ‘You can use our trademark terms.’ That’s only possible because of the power blogging confers.”

Next, Raftery calls Cory Doctorow an O’Reilly apologist who’s making biased comments without disclosing his relationship with O’Reilly. This despite Cory’s saying in his post that he thought O’Reilly should give up the claim, that John Batelle is a “pal and colleague” and that he (Cory) is a regular contributor to O’Reilly conferences.

Turns out Raftery is the troll. And a good one. He’s garnered a lot of attention. And thus far nobody has held him accountable for running a conference with a copycat name. Robert Scoble was dead on when he suggested changing the name to “IT@Cork’s Web 2.0 Workshop” and moving on.