eMint evening on legal issues for online communities July 22, 2007
Posted by Andy Roberts in : Community, online facilitation, London , trackbackI’m really glad that David Wilcox blogged the emint seminar on legal issues facing online communities which we attended over a week ago:
Designing for Civil Society: On stealing virtual sex beds, and the risks in Facebook groups
An evening of presentations and discussion on Internet law may not sound gripping, but I’m really glad I went along the other day to an event organised by Lizzie Jackson of e-mint, and lawyers K&L Gates.
The question on my mind during most of the evening was mostly to do with how we can keep the legal questions, and more often just the fear of them, from becoming an obstacle to the free exchange of information and opinion on the internet. It was heartening to hear the legal experts impart that the technology is advancing way too fast for the legislative processes to stand any chance of catching up with it.
is an online professional who initiated DARnet 
Yesterday I was asked to join Facebook albeit by mistake as I didn’t know the guy that had emailed me from Facebook.
I had to setup an account to view the profile of the guy that emailed me, which I did as I assumed you could delete the account should I not want to keep it. Turned out the account doesn’t get deleted but can be reactivated by me at any time in the future. I’m not sure I’m happy with that but then that shows I should have read the FAQs and Help sections before setting up the account.
I’m not convinced with the concept of Facebook, I already use Flickr, Blogger, Myspace and LastFM, the thing I like about all of these sites is their openness and freedom to connect with Friends and strangers through some common interest.
Facebook doesn’t seem so “open” if you get me it seems more restrictive albeit it seems to be a possible way of amalgamating a couple of the sites above ie Myspace (minus the music) and Blogger and maybe even Flickr but then why would I want to switch?
FB has maybe come along to me to late and also I can’t see where the common interest side of meeting new folks would occur with FB whereas with Myspace, LastFM and even Flickr I meet folks with an interest in music.
In fact my Blog on Blogger which isn’t about anything in particular other than random musings of mine produces a much smaller response compared to the other sites but then that could be due to my terrible writing / thinking ability