It appears Kotaku broke the agreement they made with Sony. The real lesson in this is simple: Don’t trust Kotaku. Consider: If you ran a popular blog and Kotaku approached you about a similar arrangement, would you rush into it without thinking about how they broke their word with Sony?

The real lesson about the Wired flap is this: Why do bloggers who don’t declare their own financial and business interests have standing to condemn businesses who do make that information public? When a blogger tells me “This rules, That sucks”, how can I be certain he’s not trying to sway opinion toward a business whose stock he owns? How do I know he’s not on someone’s payroll? There’s nothing magical about using blogging software to publish that makes that publisher immune from greed and desire.

Finally, the comment from “me” that asks why bloggers need to be responsible, calling it “pretentious”, trashes every blogger who tries to act as a responsibile adult. If “me” is expressing a common opinion, perhaps all those folks can identify themselves so the rest of us can blacklist and ignore them.

Kotaku knew that they could get away with leaking the rumour and remain free from blackballing. They could count on the support of the internet and probably already knew that simply by publishing what sony had said they would get access back. And if they can do that why shouldn’t they.

I agree too.

After reading through Kotaku’s version of events and some other links provided in this article, I can’t help but think Kotaku is acting like a spoilt child. Just because Sony asked them to not publish a rumour and they went ahead, they then scream at everyone about how unfair it was that they couldn’t have their ’sweets’ (interviews/exclusive information etc.) Does Kotaku seriously think that its their absolute right to be granted such access?

Also, do Sony always ask them to not publish rumours? I highly doubt it. It seems this was a special case and I believe Kotaku would have done well to take it on board.

They of course have the upper-hand in having a big ‘active’ fan community and a fast news stand. This scenario effectively appears to be where person ‘A’ commits some crime and brags about it to their ‘crew’ (aka. fan base) so as to justify any wrong doing. Sony can hardly be expected to make a press release about one blog site (however small or large) to defend their position.

Sony lose no integrity points at the end of this incident but Kotaku has definitely lost many imho.

Kotaku knew that they could get away with leaking the rumour and remain free from blackballing. They could count on the support of the internet and probably already knew that simply by publishing what sony had said they would get access back. And if they can do that why shouldn’t they.

I agree that they could do this. But did they have to present Sony in such a negative way? All they did was whip everyone up into a frenzy with people threatening to boycott Sony and crap like that

I love the way that blogs give individuals a way to communicate their personal views to a large audience in a way never before possible, but the blogosphere really needs to become more responsible about what it does with this power.

why does it need to be responsible? why can’t it just be what it is? u r way too pretentious mate