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Reddit Writes A Law: First Draft Of The Free Internet Act Emerges

77 points by esalazar 15y ago

mansolo 15y ago
I, for one, welcome America's new political overlords. And I'm not joking. Reddit will become a powerful political force outside of the traditional electorate system, and I welcome the new voice.
mansolo 15y ago
Testing
jchimney 15y ago
proud of you.. you cat, bacon, narwhal loving bunch of weirdos
kijin 15y ago
Neat idea, but the current version of the document just looks like a jumble of loosely related points, somewhat like the laundry list of demands that somebody claiming to represent OWS posted on Reddit a few months ago. What does a damage cap on copyright infringement have to do with a general prohibition of censorship? Why does the document suddenly make up an arbitrary definition of derivative content? Closely related items should be placed together, but different topics should be grouped separately. I'm also a bit skeptical about the way the document so quickly excludes "illegal data" from its purview. So much of the surveillance and censorship measures that people are worried about take place in the name of preventing and/or prosecuting illegal activity. Therefore, the scope of "illegal" must be very carefully defined in order to prevent gaping loopholes. Is downloading child porn "illegal" in the same way that uploading a copyrighted song is "illegal"? At the very least, cases involving damage claims in a civil suit should be distinguished from cases involving criminal prosecution. Also, basing damages on the retail price of copyrighted works, multiplied by the number of copies produced, seems odd to me. If you upload 0.8% of a copyrighted file to 100 people over BitTorrent, how many copies have you produced? 0.8 copies? What if the infringed work is not on sale in the first place? What happens if you violate an open-source software license? But I don't hang out on Reddit all that much, so maybe these apparent shortcomings have good reasons behind them?
- JumpCrisscross 15y ago
  It's ironic that the effect of special interests, pork, and other forms of Congressional "trolling" writing a bill in Google Docs seeks to mock come home to roost regardless.
AdleyEskridge 15y ago
> Censorship is only permitted if content is found to be illegal content in accordance with this treaty. > All false information stored to misguide, scam, cause damage, trap users financially, or mutilate collateral are illegal content. The italicized text concerns me. Not because there's anything wrong with it, but because I can easily imagine an unscrupulous politician claiming (for instance) that arguments critical of government economic policy are "false" and are intended to "misguide" and "cause damage" to the economy and well-being of the nation. The Constitution of the United States has been rendered effectively worthless by this very tactic—a couple of its clauses are routinely used to justify anything, because of their less-than-specific wording. I suspect documents like this are a symptom of the cure rather than the cure itself. They can only be enacted—and can only continue to serve their purpose—as long as the citizens and their politicians support the documents' causes.
- deleted 15y ago
  [deleted]
- vy8vWJlco 15y ago
  It looks like it's becoming a "status quo" document because, for the sake of credibility, noone wants to stand up on copyright, privacy, censorship, and human rights. The "what if someone posts illegal content!?" questions dominate, just like in the Reddit meshnet plan. We've been having this debate about the Internet for years and decades later, we're still not willing to stand up for the bad speech to save the good speech. (You can't have one without the other -- that's what that amendment was about.) Yes I think it's that black or white.... Iran has shown us it IS possible to go back to the stone age, and the scary part is, the US and Canada BOTH have a 1984 bill in play as I write. We've come a long way in terms of technology, but people are less willing to stand up for the free flow of information than ever. We are crawling back into Plato's cave. As difficult as some information can be (and it's strictly that -- information -- bits -- not murder, or rape, or worse; not a physical act but merely the vapors of physical acts), I think I'd rather have the truth and an open sky than the comfort of a lie. I'm more afraid of a world without Wikileaks than one with Wikileaks.
  - 15y ago
weaksauce 15y ago
This is why we can't have nice things; the message is getting overwritten every few seconds by a kids pasting in goatse and jailbait references. wisdom of the collective is neither when one party is overpowering.
mikegirouard 15y ago
Ok, I can't keep track of the chaos. I made this if its useful to anyone. You know what to do. https://github.com/mgirouard/free-internet-act https://github.com/mgirouard/free-internet-act
- bherms 15y ago
  you beat me to it!
bherms 15y ago
Looks like the vandals have taken their toll... Instead of open google doc, this should be a git repo. edit: Created one: https://github.com/bradherman/Reddit-Free-Internet-Act https://github.com/bradherman/Reddit-Free-Internet-Act
- kartoffelmos 15y ago
  While I at first agreed that this should be a Git repo, it could in the end defeat the document's purpose. This document is meant to be seen and governed by everyone, not only those who know how to use Git.
  - btown 15y ago
    FYI, GitHub now allows you to fork, edit, and make a pull request all from its online interface, without ever cloning on your computer. Each save is a commit, and submissions are pull requests. The feature hasn't been publicized widely, and there isn't real documentation for lay-people, but all the functionality is there.
marcamillion 15y ago
Very interesting that Reddit could really be emerging as a force for good on the internet...not just a bunch of time-wasting, cry babies. Don't mean to be harsh, but while there is some good stuff, there is a lot of just time-burning stuff. That being said, if they are able to marshal the productive collective and produce actual legislation that can work - that would be very interesting. I wonder if legislation ever written by 'non-legislators' has ever been passed into law. Is that even legal?
- trotsky 15y ago
  Between lobbyists, interest groups, the executive branch, staff attorneys, various agencies and congressional staff I doubt even a significant minority of law is written by actual legislators.
iotasquared 15y ago
Full text: http://pastebin.com/7VY4VTLn http://pastebin.com/7VY4VTLn
adulau 15y ago
I have a preference for "A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace" written by John Perry Barlow in 1996: https://projects.eff.org/~barlow/Declaration-Final.html https://projects.eff.org/~barlow/Declaration-Final.html It's more inspirational and make it more universal. Just like the "The Universal Declaration of Human Rights"...
wisty 15y ago
Here's a question - is there any piece of Javascript you would wack into a html page which would allow users to query the contact details of their representatives? It would be good if this was as international as possible (though in some countries it would be impossibl).
teflonhook 15y ago
This is precisely what reddit should be used for. Only the google doc has been fucked up.
twelvechairs 15y ago
Why do they want to write this sort of stuff in stuffy 19-th century pseudo-legalese? Cant they just have a plain speech normal copy and let this be translated into proper referenced legal documents (for various jurisdictions) by people who know what they are doing?
- JumpCrisscross 15y ago
  'Legalese' isn't just obfuscated English. It's very precise English designed to smoothly interface with the entire corpus of law. Since Redditors were trying to draft a bill it seems appropriate.
  - twelvechairs 15y ago
    Looking at the various Reddit pages, I assumed this was not just for the USA. Words have different legal meanings in different legal environments. Having said that, some of the contributors (and yourself assumedly) seem to feel the opposite.
    - JumpCrisscross 15y ago
      Oh - I assumed it was. A draft bill for no house of law is sort of pointless. More effective may have been a memo for legislators defining the minimum requirements for a country to have "Internet freedom".
- georgieporgie 15y ago
  Contracts and laws can be written in simple language, despite what some may claim. However, doing so will require them to be longer.
shingen 15y ago
It's a nice thought, but the only thing you'll get from large scale group editing & group think is mediocrity, endless confusion and endless debate. There has never been an amazing piece of 'legislation' drafted by a huge group of people. There's a very good reason why that's the case. Intelligent discourse in which critical differences and conflicts can be sorted out, can't occur at hyper scale because it becomes an echo chamber - all you'll end up hearing is everybody shouting back and forth, resulting in absolutely nothing. The only way they can do this, if they're serious about it, is through using a representation system, in which a group of people empowers one person to speak, negotiate and resolve on their behalf so that things actually get done.

77 points by esalazar 15y ago

I, for one, welcome America's new political overlords. And I'm not joking. Reddit will become a powerful political force outside of the traditional electorate system, and I welcome the new voice.

mansolo 15y ago

Testing

jchimney 15y ago

proud of you.. you cat, bacon, narwhal loving bunch of weirdos

kijin 15y ago

Neat idea, but the current version of the document just looks like a jumble of loosely related points, somewhat like the laundry list of demands that somebody claiming to represent OWS posted on Reddit a few months ago. What does a damage cap on copyright infringement have to do with a general prohibition of censorship? Why does the document suddenly make up an arbitrary definition of derivative content? Closely related items should be placed together, but different topics should be grouped separately. I'm also a bit skeptical about the way the document so quickly excludes "illegal data" from its purview. So much of the surveillance and censorship measures that people are worried about take place in the name of preventing and/or prosecuting illegal activity. Therefore, the scope of "illegal" must be very carefully defined in order to prevent gaping loopholes. Is downloading child porn "illegal" in the same way that uploading a copyrighted song is "illegal"? At the very least, cases involving damage claims in a civil suit should be distinguished from cases involving criminal prosecution. Also, basing damages on the retail price of copyrighted works, multiplied by the number of copies produced, seems odd to me. If you upload 0.8% of a copyrighted file to 100 people over BitTorrent, how many copies have you produced? 0.8 copies? What if the infringed work is not on sale in the first place? What happens if you violate an open-source software license? But I don't hang out on Reddit all that much, so maybe these apparent shortcomings have good reasons behind them?

JumpCrisscross 15y ago
It's ironic that the effect of special interests, pork, and other forms of Congressional "trolling" writing a bill in Google Docs seeks to mock come home to roost regardless.

AdleyEskridge 15y ago

> Censorship is only permitted if content is found to be illegal content in accordance with this treaty. > All false information stored to misguide, scam, cause damage, trap users financially, or mutilate collateral are illegal content. The italicized text concerns me. Not because there's anything wrong with it, but because I can easily imagine an unscrupulous politician claiming (for instance) that arguments critical of government economic policy are "false" and are intended to "misguide" and "cause damage" to the economy and well-being of the nation. The Constitution of the United States has been rendered effectively worthless by this very tactic—a couple of its clauses are routinely used to justify anything, because of their less-than-specific wording. I suspect documents like this are a symptom of the cure rather than the cure itself. They can only be enacted—and can only continue to serve their purpose—as long as the citizens and their politicians support the documents' causes.

deleted 15y ago
[deleted]
vy8vWJlco 15y ago
It looks like it's becoming a "status quo" document because, for the sake of credibility, noone wants to stand up on copyright, privacy, censorship, and human rights. The "what if someone posts illegal content!?" questions dominate, just like in the Reddit meshnet plan. We've been having this debate about the Internet for years and decades later, we're still not willing to stand up for the bad speech to save the good speech. (You can't have one without the other -- that's what that amendment was about.) Yes I think it's that black or white.... Iran has shown us it IS possible to go back to the stone age, and the scary part is, the US and Canada BOTH have a 1984 bill in play as I write. We've come a long way in terms of technology, but people are less willing to stand up for the free flow of information than ever. We are crawling back into Plato's cave. As difficult as some information can be (and it's strictly that -- information -- bits -- not murder, or rape, or worse; not a physical act but merely the vapors of physical acts), I think I'd rather have the truth and an open sky than the comfort of a lie. I'm more afraid of a world without Wikileaks than one with Wikileaks.
- 15y ago

weaksauce 15y ago

This is why we can't have nice things; the message is getting overwritten every few seconds by a kids pasting in goatse and jailbait references. wisdom of the collective is neither when one party is overpowering.

mikegirouard 15y ago

Ok, I can't keep track of the chaos. I made this if its useful to anyone. You know what to do. https://github.com/mgirouard/free-internet-act https://github.com/mgirouard/free-internet-act

bherms 15y ago
you beat me to it!

bherms 15y ago

Looks like the vandals have taken their toll... Instead of open google doc, this should be a git repo. edit: Created one: https://github.com/bradherman/Reddit-Free-Internet-Act https://github.com/bradherman/Reddit-Free-Internet-Act

kartoffelmos 15y ago
While I at first agreed that this should be a Git repo, it could in the end defeat the document's purpose. This document is meant to be seen and governed by everyone, not only those who know how to use Git.
- btown 15y ago
  FYI, GitHub now allows you to fork, edit, and make a pull request all from its online interface, without ever cloning on your computer. Each save is a commit, and submissions are pull requests. The feature hasn't been publicized widely, and there isn't real documentation for lay-people, but all the functionality is there.

marcamillion 15y ago

Very interesting that Reddit could really be emerging as a force for good on the internet...not just a bunch of time-wasting, cry babies. Don't mean to be harsh, but while there is some good stuff, there is a lot of just time-burning stuff. That being said, if they are able to marshal the productive collective and produce actual legislation that can work - that would be very interesting. I wonder if legislation ever written by 'non-legislators' has ever been passed into law. Is that even legal?

trotsky 15y ago
Between lobbyists, interest groups, the executive branch, staff attorneys, various agencies and congressional staff I doubt even a significant minority of law is written by actual legislators.

iotasquared 15y ago

Full text: http://pastebin.com/7VY4VTLn http://pastebin.com/7VY4VTLn

adulau 15y ago

I have a preference for "A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace" written by John Perry Barlow in 1996: https://projects.eff.org/~barlow/Declaration-Final.html https://projects.eff.org/~barlow/Declaration-Final.html It's more inspirational and make it more universal. Just like the "The Universal Declaration of Human Rights"...

wisty 15y ago

Here's a question - is there any piece of Javascript you would wack into a html page which would allow users to query the contact details of their representatives? It would be good if this was as international as possible (though in some countries it would be impossibl).

teflonhook 15y ago

This is precisely what reddit should be used for. Only the google doc has been fucked up.

twelvechairs 15y ago

Why do they want to write this sort of stuff in stuffy 19-th century pseudo-legalese? Cant they just have a plain speech normal copy and let this be translated into proper referenced legal documents (for various jurisdictions) by people who know what they are doing?

JumpCrisscross 15y ago
'Legalese' isn't just obfuscated English. It's very precise English designed to smoothly interface with the entire corpus of law. Since Redditors were trying to draft a bill it seems appropriate.
- twelvechairs 15y ago
  Looking at the various Reddit pages, I assumed this was not just for the USA. Words have different legal meanings in different legal environments. Having said that, some of the contributors (and yourself assumedly) seem to feel the opposite.
  - JumpCrisscross 15y ago
    Oh - I assumed it was. A draft bill for no house of law is sort of pointless. More effective may have been a memo for legislators defining the minimum requirements for a country to have "Internet freedom".
georgieporgie 15y ago
Contracts and laws can be written in simple language, despite what some may claim. However, doing so will require them to be longer.

shingen 15y ago

It's a nice thought, but the only thing you'll get from large scale group editing & group think is mediocrity, endless confusion and endless debate. There has never been an amazing piece of 'legislation' drafted by a huge group of people. There's a very good reason why that's the case. Intelligent discourse in which critical differences and conflicts can be sorted out, can't occur at hyper scale because it becomes an echo chamber - all you'll end up hearing is everybody shouting back and forth, resulting in absolutely nothing. The only way they can do this, if they're serious about it, is through using a representation system, in which a group of people empowers one person to speak, negotiate and resolve on their behalf so that things actually get done.