7 ms·

Declaration of Internet Freedom

103 points by sethbannon 14y ago

derpmeister 14y ago
Organisation is a mandatory field? Lolcats united, then?
- JOfferijns 14y ago
  The form on that page is meant for organizations, read what it says: "Individuals: Go to the action pages at Access, CREDO, EFF and Free Press to add your name."
  - dbaupp 14y ago
    For the lazy: :) Access: https://www.accessnow.org/page/s/internetdeclaration https://www.accessnow.org/page/s/internetdeclaration CREDO: http://act.credoaction.com/campaign/internetfreedom/?rc=internetdeclaration http://act.credoaction.com/campaign/internetfreedom/?rc=inte... EFF: https://action.eff.org/o/9042/p/dia/action/public/?action_KEY=8750 https://action.eff.org/o/9042/p/dia/action/public/?action_KE... FreePress: http://act.freepress.net/sign/internetdeclaration?source=website_dif_home http://act.freepress.net/sign/internetdeclaration?source=web...
lavametender 14y ago
Did not sign. This is technological challenge, not political. Statements will get you nowhere. We need cold hard code (software) and balls (hardware).
- swalsh 14y ago
  In some ways, yes this is technological. Access to the internet is a technological problem. In other ways it is political. SOPA is an example of something writing more code would not solve (well legally at least). That is because it is telling us what we can and cannot write. As nerds, we tend to just want to skirt the political aspects of the internet. Unfortunately its become larger than ourselves. Its time to accept the world for what it is, and fight to keep our place we've built.
- mtgx 14y ago
  I think it's both. Yes, the Internet's more technical people will always be ahead of whatever the Government is proposing and enforcing. The masses won't be except for a short while at most. This is why you need to treat this as a political issue, too, otherwise you'll have your technical issues of escaping Government oppression of the Internet, but you'll always be persecuted.
- panacea 14y ago
  I totally agree the challenge can only be won by technology, but a manifesto is no bad thing.
  - koide 14y ago
    I truly doubt this challenge can only be won by technology. There will always be physical parts on the technology that can be controlled by those in power, by force if needed. Just look at China.
- Gormo 14y ago
  Although the points are a bit vague and overlapping, I don't see how questions of censorship, openness, and privacy are inherently and exclusively technological. Yes, there are technological methods that can enhance our ability to rout around obstructions in each of these areas, but addressing social problems via technology is a lot more reliable and effective than attempting to address technical problems via politics. We do need code and infrastructure to support freedom even (and especially) when it is threatened, but the preservation of freedom in a social context isn't a merely technological endeavor.
- lumberjack 14y ago
  We can't keep ignoring politics or we'll end up with laws so invasive that not even hardware and software can overcome them. And more importantly we can't let them gain any legislative precedence. It's much easier to fight now than in five years. And further more I don't see how we have any advantages in the realms of hardware were we would afford to fight.
  - tomjen3 14y ago
    Normally I would agree with you, but the pace at which computers and the internet improves is now so high, and congress is so gridlocked that I do believe that we have left them behind, permantly.
    - hobin 14y ago
      I believe this is where I point out that the USA is not the only developed country in the world worth fighting for.
      - tomjen3 14y ago
        I wouldn't fight for any other, with the possible exception of Germany, Spain or Austria. France is too egocentrical, Britain (as much as I love the country) has a government hell-bent on recreating 1984, the Scandinavian countries are dying a slow death of too many paper-pushers and most of Eastern-Europe cannot rightly be called developed. But none of that matters as realistically the US is the only country powerful enough to cause sufficient damaged to be worth worring about. I should note that I am not American and so this is not a matter of nationalism.
        hobin 14y ago
        "France is too egocentrical, Britain (as much as I love the country) has a government hell-bent on recreating 1984, the Scandinavian countries are dying a slow death of too many paper-pushers and most of Eastern-Europe cannot rightly be called developed." Ignoring for the moment that much of that sounds overly cynical and is definitely an overgeneralisation, which part of 'fight' did you miss? The very reason we're fighting is to do away with many of these problems and improve the situation! For some reason, you think this applies to the USA and a few other countries, but when it comes to other countries, what you say comes down to "Now, listen, I really want to solve these problems. Really, I do. But listen, you guys have problems, so now I can't help you." How does that make sense? "But none of that matters as realistically the US is the only country powerful enough to cause sufficient damaged to be worth worring about." I think you would be surprised. The USA is still only one country. It's a very powerful one, of course, I'm glad we agree on that part. But you can't focus on one country to the exclusion of almost everything else. (Well, you can, but that would not be very smart.) Also, you forgot the Benelux, but I suspect you would also consider these countries too small to be considered.
- betterth 14y ago
  Saying that this isn't a political challenge would be like ignoring the language that a framework is built in. Technology is a framework built on top of our society, made possible by the rules and laws (or lack thereof) of our society. It is a political challenge, because we're discussing the foundation on which the rules of our society operate. The realm of politics is engaging in technology, so it's up to us whether or not this is a one way street or a two way street. However, I caution anyone who advocates a one way street (the government regulating technology and technology ignoring government) -- they're going to get it wrong (either intentionally due to lobbying from competition or just incompetence), and it's going to materially affect your business.
- abecedarius 14y ago
  Along those lines, I'd expect a declaration of freedom to go like "We're free, and we're going to do the following things" rather than "Hey, people with actual power, please respect our freedom in the following ways."
fallenhitokiri 14y ago
Is this just a "We support this" or "Later, in a few years we will call / mail you for your donation"? The pages lacks some informations, at least IMHO. Some contact details would also be great, not just a "site maintained by Free Press". IMHO a good idea but a bit more informations would not hurt credibility.
TazeTSchnitzel 14y ago
I was expecting an Anders Breivik-style 1000-page rant about "the enemies" or some such nonsense. Much more tame than expected.
stfu 14y ago
Reminds me of JPB's good old A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace: https://projects.eff.org/~barlow/Declaration-Final.html https://projects.eff.org/~barlow/Declaration-Final.html http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Declaration_of_the_Independence_of_Cyberspace http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Declaration_of_the_Independen...
Gormo 14y ago
If you look at a lot of old-fashioned documents like this - statements of principle, resolutions and declarations of one sort or another - you're likely to see a list of individual points, often making demands or other calls to action. But this will invariably be preceded by a preamble that indicates (a) who the specific people making the declaration are, and what their motivations are for doing so, (b) who the intended audience is, and what action, if any, is expected from them. This declaration lacks both of these important bits of information. We have a list of imperative bullet points - do this, don't do that - but no elaboration as to why these are desirable, to whom they're desirable, and who is expected to act on the imperative instructions. At best, it's a set of vague, aspirational intentions; at worst, it distracts us away from developing practical strategies for actually protecting internet freedom.
- terryk88a 14y ago
  Vague indeed. For example, what does "universal access" mean? How about "free to connect"? Is this declaration demanding that access to the internet be free to all? As in no cost? The language "access" to this or that has been subverted in recent years to mean that the accessed resource should be free of charge. E.G. universal access to (free) healthcare. That is decidedly not what accessible means. So I won't be supporting this declaration. I can't tell if it is demanding Free Internet, which is not a universal right.
  - numeromancer 14y ago
    I would gladly sign a document that had an exhaustive and exclusive list of declarations of what we weren't going to allow governments to do. We implicitly give governments the rights to the use of force, and governments, like people (to whom we don't give such rights) will, in time, see any lack of interdiction as an implicit approval. And positive rights, such as declaring that “all shall be provided, gratis, access to the internet”, have an implicit coercion in them; someone must be forced to provide it.
    - Gormo 14y ago
      > I would gladly sign a document that had an exhaustive and exclusive list of declarations of what we weren't going to allow governments to do. We've got one of those already. It doesn't work as well as it was intended to, because, despite the idealistic "rule of law, not men" rhetoric, laws are just abstract concepts, and the world is always under the control of people, who will game and manipulate any system of rules to their advantage. If you build an institution and give it enough power, the people who run it will eventually find a way around their constraints.
bnchdrff 14y ago
some background: http://www.slate.com/blogs/future_tense/2012/07/02/declaration_of_internet_freedom_calls_for_digital_rights_.html http://www.slate.com/blogs/future_tense/2012/07/02/declarati...
adnam 14y ago
I love the smell of astroturf
tokenadult 14y ago
This kind of effort might have been more credible from the beginning if the initial text were simultaneously composed in both Chinese and English. China leads the world in restricting the freedom of the Internet, and shows other countries by example how to do that. I MIGHT sign a thoughtfully composed statement about Internet freedom written in Chinese (which I would be able to read in Chinese), but yet another precatory statement in English mostly for the English-speaking world really doesn't motivate me to action, because it doesn't address the toughest set of problems. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_censorship_in_the_People%27s_Republic_of_China http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_censorship_in_the_Peop... http://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E4%B8%AD%E5%8D%8E%E4%BA%BA%E6%B0%91%E5%85%B1%E5%92%8C%E5%9B%BD%E7%BD%91%E7%BB%9C%E5%AE%A1%E6%9F%A5 http://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E4%B8%AD%E5%8D%8E%E4%BA%BA%E6%... AFTER EDIT: Seriously, if you want to campaign for better openness and freedom on the Internet, the people to get advice from on how to write your declaration are people who are attempting to use the Internet to circumvent regimes that have never had free and fair elections and that have never tolerated a free press.
BrennanCheung 14y ago
Free needs to be defined more. Obviously there are costs associated with maintaining the Internet; it can't be free. Also, open needs to be defined more. You can't be fully open and have privacy as well: privacy is a form of censorship. Also, this is one sided, and doesn't take into consideration the ISP's position as well. Too vague to mean anything.
lukifer 14y ago
One of the things I like about this declaration compared to other similar ones (Declaration of Independence, UDHR, Stallman) is that it makes no mention of intrinsic rights. It clearly states its objectives as goals to work towards, rather attempting to frame an imaginary natural law by which these conditions already automagically apply to the human animal. That said, it seems to me that there is a potential conflict between #3 (Openness) and #4 (Innovation). It is the same as the conflict between capitalism and democratic socialism: if you don't allow people a certain amount of economic tyranny in exchange for their work, the work won't happen, and civilization atrophies. This is intuitive with physical goods: people won't make shoes if someone can just take them, so we back up the concept of ownership with state violence, and that allows people to make a living cobbling. The same phenomenon happens in computing, be it through copyright, vendor lock-in, or walled gardens, and this is always going to create an incentive to block #3 (or, the lack of such incentive will inhibit #4). While I believe copyright/patent reform is deeply necessary, including the consideration that they might stymie more innovation than they create, this zero-sum conflict should be at the heart of it, and should be kept in mind when pursuing lofty goals of digital justice.
- joelhaus 14y ago
  Don't see the same conflict in this declaration. Assuming that you interpret #3 (Openness) as a call to not enforce property rights, but I don't see it that way. #3 is somewhat vague, but this principle seems most closely aligned with traditional net neutrality principles. Perhaps they felt that the phrase "net neutrality" was too prescriptive, and I agree. Markets with sufficient competition have no need for net neutrality regulations, unfortunately, broadband competition in the U.S. is severely lacking.
  - lukifer 14y ago
    I'm thinking of ecosystems rather than products; app stores vs. web, etc. It's easy to vilify rent-seeking behavior that drives closed systems, but without that lure, fewer platforms get built, and progress slows down. It's the kind of thing that Charlie Stross calls a Wicked Problem. Admittedly, this all depends on one's interpretation of "Openness".
joelhaus 14y ago
Appreciate the skepticism here, but this seems like an exceptionally well worded pledge. Right now, it's the usual suspects (including Y Combinator and a number of other important advocates for a better internet) that have signed on, but it's early and hopefully this will become more main-stream. An ideal outcome would probably require this to become a political lobbying tool, similar to Grover Norquist's Americans for Tax Reform "Taxpayer Protection Pledge". It's nearly impossible to win a Republican election these days unless you sign-on: 96% of all Republicans in Congress have signed the pledge to never increase taxes[0]. To address a few detractors in this thread, please don't be confused when the word "free" is used. It's in reference to freedom, not cost. However, cost is specifically addressed: Access: Promote universal access to fast and affordable networks. [0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Americans_for_Tax_Reform#Taxpayer_Protection_Pledge http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Americans_for_Tax_Reform#Taxpay...

103 points by sethbannon 14y ago

derpmeister 14y ago

Organisation is a mandatory field? Lolcats united, then?

JOfferijns 14y ago
The form on that page is meant for organizations, read what it says: "Individuals: Go to the action pages at Access, CREDO, EFF and Free Press to add your name."
- dbaupp 14y ago
  For the lazy: :) Access: https://www.accessnow.org/page/s/internetdeclaration https://www.accessnow.org/page/s/internetdeclaration CREDO: http://act.credoaction.com/campaign/internetfreedom/?rc=internetdeclaration http://act.credoaction.com/campaign/internetfreedom/?rc=inte... EFF: https://action.eff.org/o/9042/p/dia/action/public/?action_KEY=8750 https://action.eff.org/o/9042/p/dia/action/public/?action_KE... FreePress: http://act.freepress.net/sign/internetdeclaration?source=website_dif_home http://act.freepress.net/sign/internetdeclaration?source=web...

lavametender 14y ago

Did not sign. This is technological challenge, not political. Statements will get you nowhere. We need cold hard code (software) and balls (hardware).

swalsh 14y ago
In some ways, yes this is technological. Access to the internet is a technological problem. In other ways it is political. SOPA is an example of something writing more code would not solve (well legally at least). That is because it is telling us what we can and cannot write. As nerds, we tend to just want to skirt the political aspects of the internet. Unfortunately its become larger than ourselves. Its time to accept the world for what it is, and fight to keep our place we've built.
mtgx 14y ago
I think it's both. Yes, the Internet's more technical people will always be ahead of whatever the Government is proposing and enforcing. The masses won't be except for a short while at most. This is why you need to treat this as a political issue, too, otherwise you'll have your technical issues of escaping Government oppression of the Internet, but you'll always be persecuted.
panacea 14y ago
I totally agree the challenge can only be won by technology, but a manifesto is no bad thing.
- koide 14y ago
  I truly doubt this challenge can only be won by technology. There will always be physical parts on the technology that can be controlled by those in power, by force if needed. Just look at China.
Gormo 14y ago
Although the points are a bit vague and overlapping, I don't see how questions of censorship, openness, and privacy are inherently and exclusively technological. Yes, there are technological methods that can enhance our ability to rout around obstructions in each of these areas, but addressing social problems via technology is a lot more reliable and effective than attempting to address technical problems via politics. We do need code and infrastructure to support freedom even (and especially) when it is threatened, but the preservation of freedom in a social context isn't a merely technological endeavor.
lumberjack 14y ago
We can't keep ignoring politics or we'll end up with laws so invasive that not even hardware and software can overcome them. And more importantly we can't let them gain any legislative precedence. It's much easier to fight now than in five years. And further more I don't see how we have any advantages in the realms of hardware were we would afford to fight.
- tomjen3 14y ago
  Normally I would agree with you, but the pace at which computers and the internet improves is now so high, and congress is so gridlocked that I do believe that we have left them behind, permantly.
  - hobin 14y ago
    I believe this is where I point out that the USA is not the only developed country in the world worth fighting for.
    - tomjen3 14y ago
      I wouldn't fight for any other, with the possible exception of Germany, Spain or Austria. France is too egocentrical, Britain (as much as I love the country) has a government hell-bent on recreating 1984, the Scandinavian countries are dying a slow death of too many paper-pushers and most of Eastern-Europe cannot rightly be called developed. But none of that matters as realistically the US is the only country powerful enough to cause sufficient damaged to be worth worring about. I should note that I am not American and so this is not a matter of nationalism.
      - hobin 14y ago
        "France is too egocentrical, Britain (as much as I love the country) has a government hell-bent on recreating 1984, the Scandinavian countries are dying a slow death of too many paper-pushers and most of Eastern-Europe cannot rightly be called developed." Ignoring for the moment that much of that sounds overly cynical and is definitely an overgeneralisation, which part of 'fight' did you miss? The very reason we're fighting is to do away with many of these problems and improve the situation! For some reason, you think this applies to the USA and a few other countries, but when it comes to other countries, what you say comes down to "Now, listen, I really want to solve these problems. Really, I do. But listen, you guys have problems, so now I can't help you." How does that make sense? "But none of that matters as realistically the US is the only country powerful enough to cause sufficient damaged to be worth worring about." I think you would be surprised. The USA is still only one country. It's a very powerful one, of course, I'm glad we agree on that part. But you can't focus on one country to the exclusion of almost everything else. (Well, you can, but that would not be very smart.) Also, you forgot the Benelux, but I suspect you would also consider these countries too small to be considered.
betterth 14y ago
Saying that this isn't a political challenge would be like ignoring the language that a framework is built in. Technology is a framework built on top of our society, made possible by the rules and laws (or lack thereof) of our society. It is a political challenge, because we're discussing the foundation on which the rules of our society operate. The realm of politics is engaging in technology, so it's up to us whether or not this is a one way street or a two way street. However, I caution anyone who advocates a one way street (the government regulating technology and technology ignoring government) -- they're going to get it wrong (either intentionally due to lobbying from competition or just incompetence), and it's going to materially affect your business.
abecedarius 14y ago
Along those lines, I'd expect a declaration of freedom to go like "We're free, and we're going to do the following things" rather than "Hey, people with actual power, please respect our freedom in the following ways."

fallenhitokiri 14y ago

Is this just a "We support this" or "Later, in a few years we will call / mail you for your donation"? The pages lacks some informations, at least IMHO. Some contact details would also be great, not just a "site maintained by Free Press". IMHO a good idea but a bit more informations would not hurt credibility.

TazeTSchnitzel 14y ago

I was expecting an Anders Breivik-style 1000-page rant about "the enemies" or some such nonsense. Much more tame than expected.

stfu 14y ago

Reminds me of JPB's good old A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace: https://projects.eff.org/~barlow/Declaration-Final.html https://projects.eff.org/~barlow/Declaration-Final.html http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Declaration_of_the_Independence_of_Cyberspace http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Declaration_of_the_Independen...

Gormo 14y ago

If you look at a lot of old-fashioned documents like this - statements of principle, resolutions and declarations of one sort or another - you're likely to see a list of individual points, often making demands or other calls to action. But this will invariably be preceded by a preamble that indicates (a) who the specific people making the declaration are, and what their motivations are for doing so, (b) who the intended audience is, and what action, if any, is expected from them. This declaration lacks both of these important bits of information. We have a list of imperative bullet points - do this, don't do that - but no elaboration as to why these are desirable, to whom they're desirable, and who is expected to act on the imperative instructions. At best, it's a set of vague, aspirational intentions; at worst, it distracts us away from developing practical strategies for actually protecting internet freedom.

terryk88a 14y ago
Vague indeed. For example, what does "universal access" mean? How about "free to connect"? Is this declaration demanding that access to the internet be free to all? As in no cost? The language "access" to this or that has been subverted in recent years to mean that the accessed resource should be free of charge. E.G. universal access to (free) healthcare. That is decidedly not what accessible means. So I won't be supporting this declaration. I can't tell if it is demanding Free Internet, which is not a universal right.
- numeromancer 14y ago
  I would gladly sign a document that had an exhaustive and exclusive list of declarations of what we weren't going to allow governments to do. We implicitly give governments the rights to the use of force, and governments, like people (to whom we don't give such rights) will, in time, see any lack of interdiction as an implicit approval. And positive rights, such as declaring that “all shall be provided, gratis, access to the internet”, have an implicit coercion in them; someone must be forced to provide it.
  - Gormo 14y ago
    > I would gladly sign a document that had an exhaustive and exclusive list of declarations of what we weren't going to allow governments to do. We've got one of those already. It doesn't work as well as it was intended to, because, despite the idealistic "rule of law, not men" rhetoric, laws are just abstract concepts, and the world is always under the control of people, who will game and manipulate any system of rules to their advantage. If you build an institution and give it enough power, the people who run it will eventually find a way around their constraints.

bnchdrff 14y ago

some background: http://www.slate.com/blogs/future_tense/2012/07/02/declaration_of_internet_freedom_calls_for_digital_rights_.html http://www.slate.com/blogs/future_tense/2012/07/02/declarati...

adnam 14y ago

I love the smell of astroturf

tokenadult 14y ago

This kind of effort might have been more credible from the beginning if the initial text were simultaneously composed in both Chinese and English. China leads the world in restricting the freedom of the Internet, and shows other countries by example how to do that. I MIGHT sign a thoughtfully composed statement about Internet freedom written in Chinese (which I would be able to read in Chinese), but yet another precatory statement in English mostly for the English-speaking world really doesn't motivate me to action, because it doesn't address the toughest set of problems. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_censorship_in_the_People%27s_Republic_of_China http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_censorship_in_the_Peop... http://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E4%B8%AD%E5%8D%8E%E4%BA%BA%E6%B0%91%E5%85%B1%E5%92%8C%E5%9B%BD%E7%BD%91%E7%BB%9C%E5%AE%A1%E6%9F%A5 http://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E4%B8%AD%E5%8D%8E%E4%BA%BA%E6%... AFTER EDIT: Seriously, if you want to campaign for better openness and freedom on the Internet, the people to get advice from on how to write your declaration are people who are attempting to use the Internet to circumvent regimes that have never had free and fair elections and that have never tolerated a free press.

BrennanCheung 14y ago

Free needs to be defined more. Obviously there are costs associated with maintaining the Internet; it can't be free. Also, open needs to be defined more. You can't be fully open and have privacy as well: privacy is a form of censorship. Also, this is one sided, and doesn't take into consideration the ISP's position as well. Too vague to mean anything.

lukifer 14y ago

One of the things I like about this declaration compared to other similar ones (Declaration of Independence, UDHR, Stallman) is that it makes no mention of intrinsic rights. It clearly states its objectives as goals to work towards, rather attempting to frame an imaginary natural law by which these conditions already automagically apply to the human animal. That said, it seems to me that there is a potential conflict between #3 (Openness) and #4 (Innovation). It is the same as the conflict between capitalism and democratic socialism: if you don't allow people a certain amount of economic tyranny in exchange for their work, the work won't happen, and civilization atrophies. This is intuitive with physical goods: people won't make shoes if someone can just take them, so we back up the concept of ownership with state violence, and that allows people to make a living cobbling. The same phenomenon happens in computing, be it through copyright, vendor lock-in, or walled gardens, and this is always going to create an incentive to block #3 (or, the lack of such incentive will inhibit #4). While I believe copyright/patent reform is deeply necessary, including the consideration that they might stymie more innovation than they create, this zero-sum conflict should be at the heart of it, and should be kept in mind when pursuing lofty goals of digital justice.

joelhaus 14y ago
Don't see the same conflict in this declaration. Assuming that you interpret #3 (Openness) as a call to not enforce property rights, but I don't see it that way. #3 is somewhat vague, but this principle seems most closely aligned with traditional net neutrality principles. Perhaps they felt that the phrase "net neutrality" was too prescriptive, and I agree. Markets with sufficient competition have no need for net neutrality regulations, unfortunately, broadband competition in the U.S. is severely lacking.
- lukifer 14y ago
  I'm thinking of ecosystems rather than products; app stores vs. web, etc. It's easy to vilify rent-seeking behavior that drives closed systems, but without that lure, fewer platforms get built, and progress slows down. It's the kind of thing that Charlie Stross calls a Wicked Problem. Admittedly, this all depends on one's interpretation of "Openness".

joelhaus 14y ago

Appreciate the skepticism here, but this seems like an exceptionally well worded pledge. Right now, it's the usual suspects (including Y Combinator and a number of other important advocates for a better internet) that have signed on, but it's early and hopefully this will become more main-stream. An ideal outcome would probably require this to become a political lobbying tool, similar to Grover Norquist's Americans for Tax Reform "Taxpayer Protection Pledge". It's nearly impossible to win a Republican election these days unless you sign-on: 96% of all Republicans in Congress have signed the pledge to never increase taxes[0]. To address a few detractors in this thread, please don't be confused when the word "free" is used. It's in reference to freedom, not cost. However, cost is specifically addressed: Access: Promote universal access to fast and affordable networks. [0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Americans_for_Tax_Reform#Taxpayer_Protection_Pledge http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Americans_for_Tax_Reform#Taxpay...