So, I've been noticing a little chatter about this press/blogger distinction as I continue to post my notes from D. No one has asked me not to do this (a fact that is utterly unsurprising to me given the overall insignificance of this weblog and its authoress). Moreover, nothing on the conference Web site, in the related materials I received or in the comments from the stage led me to believe the remarks of the speakers were not an appropriate subject for public discussion. If someone nonetheless thinks I am undermining the fabric of an ordered society and should cut it out post haste, I'd like to hear about it, and why. I'd also like to give a tip o' the bowler to Ben Hammersley, who points out the enduring importance of trust, confidence, good manners and circumspection, even (or perhaps especially) in the world, as he puts it, of webloggery.

I will note I can think of two times in the past when in good conscience I did not feel I could blog a speaker's remarks without his or her express consent. Once was when Glenn Otis Brown of Creative Commons spoke at my law firm, and the other was when Chief Judge Schroeder of the Ninth Circuit spoke at a local bar function. In both cases, I felt given the circumstances of the talks the speakers would have been caught off guard later to discover that an attendee had publicized their remarks on a Web site. However, in considering the expectations of the very public, and presumably quite Web savvy, figures speaking at a conference called D: All Things Digital, I must say I reached some different conclusions—especially in the absence of confidentiality requests to the audience.*

If you have something you think I need to hear along these lines, I'd like to hear it soon; my notes of the copyright panel in particular are fairly burning a hole on my desktop...

*And then of course there are events like Digital ID World, where the very stability of the space-time continuum can be threatened by the on- and off-site blogging.