The Sydney Morning Herald has published an article about an MP angry at a fake MySpace profile. Although the profile has now been removed, Stewart McArthur was upset that the “offensive, vulgar and inflammatory” fake site was set up in his name.
In closing, the article concludes:
The Web 2.0 phenomenon which includes sites like MySpace, Facebook and YouTube has come under increasing fire from government and industry due to its largely user authored content which is notoriously difficult to regulate.
This raises an interesting issue – isn’t freedom of expression one of the highly esteemed aspects of the participatory Web 2.0? Re-emergence of independent and individual voices is one of the exciting things about read/write culture and the technologies that facilitate it. Why should it be regulated?
I like this post. and your painted eggs are awesome! maybe when Jasper is...
#1 by Luke Webster on August 12, 2007 - 4:36 pm
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For the same reasons that murder and theft should be regulated, I guess.
#2 by Luke Webster on August 12, 2007 - 4:37 pm
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And in the same way.
#3 by Clansi on August 14, 2007 - 11:06 am
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What I found interesting about the article is that it stated that the fake profile had already been removed. Doesn’t this suggest that it is being regulated? The simple fact is that people don’t want to take responsibility, they want media attention. An individual would rather kick up a big stink about an error in Wikipedia or a false myspace profile rather than fixing the error themselves, or contacting myspace admin and having the profile removed.
Of course this is what Stewart McArthur was doing, lets not forget its an election year….