I recently found a couple of great posts on Shareable.net by Janelle Orsi about how greater sharing will need changes to the law. Lawyers will also need to develop the contacts and frameworks for many aspects of sharing.
The first piece is called the birth of sharing law and examines the wide range of sharing initiatives that people are now trying out. As these become increasingly mainstream, some will definitely require some amendments to the law. The second article looks at some specific areas that lawyers are examining, particularly things like:
- how to get small amounts of funding from large numbers of people, say 200 people investing $100 in a cafe, without needing to go through a complicated compliance process
- how to handle the taxation of bartering
- how landsharing works on a large scale
- who is the employer and who is the employee in a worker-owned co-op
So far, goodwill, sensible discussion before starting to share, and the small scale of sharing means has been little litigation. But as the sharing concept grows, the laws and contracts governing the arrangements need to evolve. I think they will.