All Bar about two or three of my most ardent friends I am the strongest believer and defender of free speech and the free market I know. The former, I believe far beyond what exists in the United Kingdom and much of Europe. I came to this position after volunteering for organisations which campaigned on the interface between public policy and computers on issues like copyright, encryption and identity cards before OpenStreetMap was born. Thus what I say is tempered by a relatively deep understanding of the rights and issues surrounding things like fair dealing/use, right to privacy and so on.
There is a blog and twitter account which attempts to mirror my thoughts and actions with witty insight. These represent at a guess two or three people who for the most part are quite funny if crude. A fake persona in the digital age. The recent departures in to my personal life amongst this commentary has moved beyond what I will reasonably deal with, and has begun to impact others which I don't feel is appropriate. This is sad. So I feel the need to reduce my online presence which I regret, in that the very point of the web is sharing information and I enjoy those services like flickr and dopplr which I will shortly curtail. It will certainly not totally stop any more personal comments to withdraw from these services any more than the RIAA suing twelve year olds will stop music piracy, but I will limit the scope of information available. This will give me some comfort. The quickest and simplest way to remove myself is to unfollow, unsubscribe and unfriend people en masse from these various services and begin again by admitting people carefully and with a consideration of privacy. If you're the victim of this then don't take it personally, just re-friend me or send me a note. This post will give me something to link to for explanation. In any case I salute parody but I must protect others from the fallout. Yours &c. Steve _______________________________________________ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk