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Maybe, to listen to defenders of freedom of Internet speech. Maybe not, to read about a new lawsuit in the US against the popular online site AudoAdmit and 28 of its anonymous contributors.

The hot topic among Internet experts in the past few months has been Web 2, shorthand for an approach to the Internet that says content is created by the public: you and me and our friends. The beauty of Web 2 for companies is that they get content and therefore traffic without spending anything because we contributors are creating the content it for free. Examples, in case you don’t follow me: YouTube, Flickr, MySpace. On on a local level in the Lake Geneva region we have social networks such as GenevaOnline or commercial newspapers trying to shift to the Internet, such as 24 Heures and Le Matin, with their drive to get everyone blogging. The more popular the better because traffic should rise and therefore advertisers will buy space.

There are two problems with Web 2. There is a lot of garbage out there and while some people don’t mind wading through it, many of us don’t have time. There are also some gems, but watch a documentary about African diamond hunters and you’ll think about the time and real cost of the investment to find the gems. The second problem with Web 2 is that the freedom to post seems to make peopel forget that they have responsibilities, social and moral, towards other people.

Now it looks like you might also have legal obligations, and how many anonymous contributors know what those are? I think I smell a new legal business cooking.

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