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Product liability refers to the collection of legal decisions and the statutes which impose costs on manufacturers of products whose use might cause injury to consumers. The objectives of product liability statutes and common law decisions are worthy. Originally crafted by state judges in the early to middle of the 20th century, product liability was originally intended to promote consumer safety and to balance the interests of individuals against well funded companies.
Since then, product liability has become an extremely complex area of the law. Due to differences between jurisdictions, injured consumers in similar situations end up being compensated very differently. As such, neither of the objectives of efficiency or fairness is served by the status quo.
The product liability reform movement encompasses a wide variety of organizations. From industry entities to trade associations, there is growing recognition that the current product liability legal system leads to distortions in prices and prompts frivolous lawsuits. It is hence for this reason that we are now experiencing these groups escalate their collaboration through? and other new applications of web services.
This article discusses some of the most promising areas in which these activists are applying the new collaboration and conferencing technologies.
Use a free conference calling system
In the last five years, there has been growing coordination between geographically diverse product reform advocacy groups. One underlying reason for this trend has been reduced air travel costs - a trend that may now be sliding back with skyrocketing oil costs.
A separate driver is the accessibility of free teleconference start-ups. A number of these types of? systems like Rondee's service operate on a similar key method. They give you a PIN and a toll number to dial. If all teleconference users dial the same toll number and enter the same code, they are put into the conference.
Launch your own blog
Quite a few product liability advocates are turning to the Internet to disseminate information and share strategies. Just type the search term blog into any major search engine and you'll see a lot of resources that allow you to rapidly launch your own blogging platform. What formerly might have taken hours to build, and hours more to maintain, can now be established in literally minutes.
Create an RSS feed for your web site
Product liability centered web sites contain reams of educational content about pending lawsuits and citizen initiatives. In many situations, however, interested parties lack the time to frequently visit those web sites for updates. An RSS feed, also known as real simple syndication, is a simple method of pushing new content to the desktop; the benefit of RSS to the user is the aggregation of information from multiple sources into one place.
Deploy an automated electronic newsletter solution
It was not that long in the past that sending out an electronic newsletter was time consuming and difficult. This has now changed. On-line services are making it possible to create scalable newsletters. These solutions reduce the work load by as much as 75% and in so doing allow product liability reform organizations to concentrate on content development rather than content delivery.
Develop your online network
The most advanced product liability advocacy organizations create networks of supporters who believe in their philosophy and mission. While the term networking sometimes gets a less than ideal reputation, the simple reality is that these networks can provide significant help to product liability reform advocacy organizations. Today in Palo Alto, the expectation is that professional folks will have at least a minimal profile on such sites.
Use Online Collaboration
Some product liability advocacy groups have distributed leadership groups, and it is difficult to have face-to-face meetings. Technology is solving this problem by way of desktop sharing. Whether it's displaying a PowerPoint document displaying the group's development plan or a spreadsheet showing the tracking of volunteer participation desktop sharing can be quite useful for not a few product liability organizations.
