CNet has a discussion about creating a "commenter's bill of rights." After a little spat that resulted in comments getting accidentally deleted, Robert Scoble apparently began to act like he owned his comments that he posted on a third party site for another blogger. As is often the case, rather than seek a simple rule, there is now some talk about creating a whole new framework of rights which will end up just being a burden on bloggers and the software developers who write their software.

The simplest route for handling bloggers' comments would be to cover alteration of them in substantial ways under existing libel statutes. If someone changes your comments to mean something that a reasonable person would construe as being very much not what you had said, I think it would be fair to allow some sort of modest litigiation over that. Some bloggers are inclined to go so far as to completely rewrite the comments of those they think are trolls, making them say all manner of sexually debauched things, and obviously there ought to be consequences for that if the target is posting under their real identity or an identity easily traced to them.

Lastly, as far as editing one's comments and even deleting them, I think the inability to do so has some real utility for keeping things under a little bit of control. Without the ability to airbrush or simply eliminate embarassing comments, some people will be more inclined to actually think before they post comments or to just not write comments at all.