Forum .LRN Q&A: Response to Community building vs. privacy in online learning

Don is correct: there are many legal issues to consider here. A simple solution
was implemented in OpenACS: the read_private_data privilege. Only if a user
has read_private_data privilege on another user, then they can see another
user's personal information (email address, etc...). This is by no means a
complete solution, but it's actually a more solid start than it initially appears to
be.

I agree with Carl conceptually: we don't want the privacy laws to prevent fully
open communities from existing. But we also want to enable privacy control
where required for usage.