Interesting. I think globalization is an interesting second-order issue here. The pressing issue here, and thank goodness some people are working on it, is privacy (and even piracy) and identity in the digital age of user-generated content. It’s too important, subtle, early, profound to render quick judgments. Just because the youngsters snap up a new technology doesn’t mean it has no potential for harm.

This further illustrates that concerns over privacy have replaced political correctness as the new in thing to fret about. Recently, LSAC-the agency that administers the LSAT in both Canada and the United States ran into a somewhat similar problem. Traditionally, as part of the LSAT process, test takers are fingerprinted. Test takers and lawyers in Canada have had a problem with this for years and became more upset about it when the Patriot Act was passed in the United States. This is because the Patriot Act requires LSAC to turn over the fingerprints to the US federal government to be held on file. In Canada, this was seen as a further privacy violation of something that was already considered, by many, to be a violation of privacy. The compromise that was reached is that Canadian test takers in lieu of being fingerprinted must instead submit a small “headshot” when entering the test facility. Which is generally viewed to be substantially more aggravating to find a appropriate size photo then simply being finger printed would be.
Perhaps the violations found by the students at UofO will lead to similar compromises with facebook that will lead to distinctly Canadian facebook amendments for Canadian users. Ironically, as any law professor will tell you- law students are the most eager lawyers. Give these students five years of legal practice and chances are they will not care about facebook privacy in the slightest.