(I know you didn't mean me specifically, but I felt the anecdote applied here.)

Would I be OK with it? I would hope that the person who took offence (CDN spelling) would have the stones to step up and say why they were offended and give me the opportunity to make amends. That's how friendships should work, although I know they often don't.

It seems to me that there's a real disconnect between personal relationships, the seemingly impersonal nature of the tools we're using to foster and document these relationships, and the rules of behaviour we should follow.

(I know you didn't mean me specifically, but I felt the anecdote applied here.)

Would I be OK with it? I would hope that the person who took offence (CDN spelling) would have the stones to step up and say why they were offended and give me the opportunity to make amends. That's how friendships should work, although I know they often don't.

It seems to me that there's a real disconnect between personal relationships, the seemingly impersonal nature of the tools we're using to foster and document these relationships, and the rules of behaviour we should follow.

I think that's the key here. You probably don't have access to protected items if you're not a in person's online network — a friend to some degree. So what real world relationships are you damaging by resharing? And are you okay with that? Will you still be okay with that if it happened to you? (And I don't mean you, specifically.)

Flickr does a pretty good job in both spaces though but I think the concept of photos as IP is much stronger than treating conversational text as such. Nobody thinks about licensing in regards to individual tweets.

we have behavioral norms around email discussion lists right? it's an etiquette breach to resend a message to non-members in many communities. why not around SNS? in both cases, it's one-to-many, or limited-group interaction.

The problem, though, is that most people don't think about online privacy like you do. The natural ways in which people use these tools makes them not think about the larger impacts for themselves or others. I'd argue that if that was, in fact, put front and center for people to have to consider with every interaction with these services or as part of the registration process, it would become a huge barrier of entry for them. Hell, myspace and facebook both have robust privacy tools now and I'd bet good money that the overwhelming majority of users don't take advantage. And that they don't take advantage isn't really hurting them.

Blissful ignorance and easy points of entry often go hand in hand and, ultimately, the makers of these tools/services are trying to gain the most usage possible.

And, frankly, I think that over-sharers don't get to have their cake and eat it, too. If you want to say some wild shit online, own it, or do it anonymously. When did the responsibility of protecting your reputation move from the individual to the tools? Hell, when phones were first in wide use, you could just sit on the open bell line and eavesdrop. People knew it and talked anyway. It's the risk you take sometimes so protect your own neck.

And that last paragraph sounds way more harsh than I intended My rhetoric is robust today.

Whether we're talking about Twitter or Facebook it's really the same debate. Just as someone can re-tweet from Tweetdeck, I can take a screen grab of your Facebook or "private" LiveJournal page, I can copy and paste text, or I can save a "private" image to my desktop. You can right-click "protected" images in Flickr, save them, and repost.

My focus is on Twitter because that is the only place online where I post protected content. But the service is not the problem. We are the problem. I am re-raising an issue that has been around since ARAPNET: just because you CAN reshare doesn't mean you should reshare.

As I said, I don't post much that would mortify me. But I am raising the point because I want us all to think about these issues.

Let's be clear: Twitter IS NOT a community. It is a messaging platform.

Some people also use it as a community. I choose to use it as a one-to-many-but-not-the-whole-world messaging platform. "I don't want my Twitters to be Googled" IS EXACTLY THE SAME as "Don't share with anyone else." By resharing a protected tweet as a public tweet, you have made it Google-able and undermined the whole point of a protected Twitter feed.

I also disagree that we are building an open sharing model. I'd say that close to half of my Twitter friends — who are my real life friends — have protected feeds. I know a few people who maintain two separate feeds, one public one private. And because I keep a small circle, I have a very good sense of who is public and private in my Twitter family. If I am not sure, I take the time to CHECK before I retweet, unless it's specifies in the tweet that it should be or may be reshared.

I do try and be cognizant of retweeting or how I respond to private feeds. As a matter of fact it was responding to one of your private tweets that made me aware. I totally get and respect your reasons for feed privacy and don't feel it is my place to share that information in my public feed even indirectly. I look for and respect the lock and I try my best to not share information private tweets (which can happen in the way you respond not just from reproducing the content) just as I would not share from a private email or IM. But that's just me and I don't expect it from others so I tend to follow the old "if you wouldn't want to see it on the front page of the New York Times" rule or what jbrotherlove said: "We are rapidly approaching a point where if you don't want something reproduced, you shouldn't produce it. And this isn't only relegated to online activity."