yours2share - sharing stuff & collaborative consumption » Janelle Orsi

Sharing law

sophie — Thu, 12 Aug 2010 16:25:32 +0000

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.

Car sharing and car clubs

sophie — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 12:50:09 +0000

I’ve blogged before about shared ownership of cars and car clubs, but saw these articles on shareable.net: How to share a car, part 1 and How to share a car part 2. The articles are written by Janelle Orsi the author of a new book The Sharing Solution. The first part broadly covers car clubs, in the UK these are operated by companies like Zipcar, Connect by Hertz and CityCarClub. The second part covers informal car clubs, where a small group (say two to six) private individuals own a car. I’m pleases that , wrote these articles cover this, because I think this is a great way forward, particularly for rural and small town commnities where the major car clubs are unlikely to operate, and where there are often severe transport issues. However few people appear to even cosider owning a car with people who live nearby. Part 2 also covers carpooling or liftsharing: in the UK the major operator is Liftshare.

Another great source of information about car sharing is Carplus and this recent report by Frost and Sullivan on the sustainable potential of carsharing is worth a read.

yours2share has some great guidance on car clubs and car sharing and here are the current car sharing listings

The same sharing wavelength

sophie — Fri, 22 Jan 2010 18:35:25 +0000

Someone on my wavelength! I feel like yelling from the rooftops!

This post on shareable.net about non profit organisations sharing to cut costs is one (of many) areas that I’ve always thought yours2share could easily facilitate: resources and services used by organisations. And yet most people don’t even consider this, unless they know people well in the other organisation or unless the economic drivers are very high. In the former category, I know that health authorities often share resources and in the latter, I’m told that oil companies pool together to buy the most expensive spare parts rather than all carry one each of a part that rarely fails. I’ve written a lengthy comment on the above post, so please read this if you want to find out more of my views.

In the article Janelle Orsi is only talking about not for profit organsiations, but I think profit making organisations can also get together to share. The article above is actually the second of two parts. The first part expands on the types of things that organisations could share.

If anyone wants to share accomodation, space, equipment, services or anything else with another organisation, please contact me and I’ll help work out exactly where to post the ad on yours2share and I’ll also work hard to publicise the request.