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Values aren't always codified in formal documents. If they were, Aaron Swartz would still be alive, since a key fact that lawyers have been hammering home to u
by defen 14y ago
Values aren't always codified in formal documents. If they were, Aaron Swartz would still be alive, since a key fact that lawyers have been hammering home to us for the past few days is that federal prosecutors are only capable of following the rules as they are written.
In other fields of human endeavor there's plenty of other sources of knowledge. For example, folklore.
"The Net interprets censorship as damage and routes around it."
-- John Gilmore
"History is rife with examples of governments taking actions to ‘protect’ their citizens from harm by controlling access to information and inhibiting freedom of expression. We must make sure, collectively, that the internet avoids a similar fate."
-- Vint Cerf
- rayiner 14y agoC'mon. Since when are technical people so whimsical? Believe in folklore, have your politics, but don't make the ridiculous assertion that a technology for moving bits around comes with a particular set of politics baked in. What, praytell, are the politics of the transistor? The internal combustion engine?
- defen 14y agoDefining the Internet as "a technology for moving bits around" is incredibly reductive and sterile, and does nothing to capture the reality of it. You may as well say that a brain is a "collection of cells that transmit electrical potentials". What are the politics of a neuron? The Internet encompasses more than its hardware and algorithms. It was created and is operated by tens of thousands of people with real values, is used by many more, and freedom of information is a very important principle for many of them.
- rayiner 14y agoWhat are the politics of a neuron? There aren't any. It's mechanism. You're free to give your neurons whatever policy you wish. There are people who created the internet who believe in freedom of information. There are people who were just working on a defense contract at a major defense contractor. There are people who operate it now who believes lots of different things, and even those that believe in "freedom of information" in some sense have all sorts of definitions for what they think it means. Creators of technology don't get to decide what politics will be attached to that technology. RMS doesn't like Android, which contains GPL-ed software. Does it matter? Of course not.
- defen 14y agoMaybe it's late, maybe I'm just slow, but it feels like your argument is jumping around, so I'll just ask: What are "Internet values"? Are you saying the phrase is meaningless because the Internet can't have values because it's just some hardware and algorithms; or are you saying that "Internet values" can theoretically be anything, but what they happen to be are the current laws regarding Internet use in the United States, which means that "Freedom of Information" is not an "Internet value"; or are you arguing something else?
- rayiner 14y agoI'm saying "internet values" is meaningless, fluffy terminology. Some of the people who created the internet might have had certain values, but that doesn't make them "internet values" any more than whatever believes the inventors of the transistor held makes them "transistor values." That is not to say that we as a society don't have values about the use and function of the internet. But we get to decide what those values are, not the people who happened to create the hardware and the protocols.
- defen 14y agoI feel like this whole conversation could have been averted if you had just given "Internet Values" a charitable interpretation. Why couldn't "Internet Values" have meant "the values we as a society have about the use and function of the Internet"? I'd argue that if you look at how people actually use the Internet, it's closer to how the founders wanted it to work than how the CFAA stipulates that we should use it.
- JonnieCache 14y agoThe ironic thing is that rayiner is displaying exactly the same problematic rhetorical behaviours that we're all so upset with Ortiz for. Wilfully over-narrowing/widening an interpretation in order to win an argument at any cost. America's slavish veneration of their constitutional text is largely responsible for this poisonous legalistic mode that has infected their discourse at all levels. Discuss.
- nitrogen 14y agoThe internal combustion engine contributed to a significant increase in the freedom of movement of individuals. The Internet provides a similar boost to the free flow of information, spreading it further than it would otherwise. Both of these outcomes have political implications, and I would go so far as to say are nearly inevitable emergent behaviors of the two inventions.