Blue MauMau, Mavi Marmara and the Net
When I started blogging here, a franchise lawyer asked me, "Why are you blogging on that site? Don't you think it's reputation will rub off on you?" A bit naive, I didn't get what he was saying, but I've come to learn that Blue MauMau is perceived by some as a voice for franchisee malcontents.
I decided that this didn't bother me because I trust readers to judge me by the merits of what I write, but I have given it some thought. The recent events with the Mavi Marmara, the Turkish ship boarded by Israelis where 9 passengers were killed, helped bring these thoughts into focus enough that I decided to write about them.
The intitial news stories about the Mavi Marmara were quite critical of Israel. Then dozens of nations separately, and through the UN, began condemning Israel. The Israelis claimed self defense, but the claims seemed hollow as this was a flotilla of peace and humanitatrian activists.
About a day or so after the event, though, the Israeli army began releasing on you tube video of the event showing soldiers being beaten with bats and metal rods, being thrown overboard, and being stabbed. Then an Israeli group mocked the motives of the passengers by creating a parody of We are the World, which they titled We Con the World, and posted it on you tube. The parody was viewed over 2 million times before being removed because of copyright claims. And now we are seeing new videos as countless passengers had video and photographic equipment that are being released to them.
In this blog, I'm not interested whether Israel was right or wrong, aggressor or victim. Instead, what I find interesting for this discussion is how powerful the internet became where each one of us could see raw footage and start to draw our own conclusions. And it wasn't quite raw -- the videos used pointers and highlighting circles and captions, but whoever was editing it understood how to let the viewere to do as much of the work as possible.
While a bit of a stretch, this episode illustrates some of my feeling about Blue MauMau's potential. Don Sniegowski owns the Blue MauMau virtual real estate, but my understanding is that he does not discriminate by point of view as to who can blog on the site. So if prominent franchisor advocates want to blog or comment in droves, they could do so. Since Blue MauMau is a wiki-type format, the participants make the message. There is no control beyond Don's censorship, and my understanding is that he censors only lightly and only for good cause, but never because of point of view.
For franchise systems, the weed-like spread of internet commentary and social networks has created a modest onset of panic and chaos. Best practice is now to have a internet posting policy that creates boundaries for acceptable and unacceptable behavior and attribution. But we are all just learning and experimenting. And as the Mavi Marmara incident shows, when a crisis strikes, there is tremendous benefit to moving aggressively to get your message out in an objective fashion on you tube or otherwise where viewers feel that they can weigh the evidence themselves with minimal spin. And then the online commentary world takes on a world of its own, but having allies who support your message is necessary and powerful if you want a fair hearing.
When the world's eyes are on you, you can choose whether to contribute to what the world will see and, if so, the substance of the message. Sites like Blue MauMau can become opinion shapers. But it's unclear how all this will shake out, and how our first-stage internet posting policies will evolve, other than to be sure that it will change and change fast. And that none of us has any control over any of it.
About the Author: Peter Silverman is a franchise lawyer, mediator and arbitrator. You can reach him at psilverman@slk-law.com. Read his biography page. Any thoughts he offers on Blue Mau-Mau are his personal opinion and are not legal advice.
