A Digital Citizen's Bill of Rights 167
New submitter matt.a.f writes "Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA) has published a first-draft Internet Bill of Rights, and it's open for feedback. He wrote, 'While I do not have all the answers, the remarkable cooperation we witnessed in defense of an open Internet showed me three things. First, government is flying blind, interfering and regulating without understanding even the basics. Second, we have a rare opportunity to give government marching orders on how to treat the Internet, those who use it and the innovation it supports. And third, we must get to work immediately because our opponents are not giving up.' Given the value of taking an active approach agains prospective laws such as SOPA, PIPA, and ACTA, I think it's very important to try to spread awareness, participation, and encourage elected officials to support such things."
Re:The problem with these efforts (Score:3, Interesting)
Darrel Issa (Score:5, Interesting)
and Polis, and Lofgren are probably the most Internet-literate people I had ever seen as politicians.
That Issa did not follow Smith's leadership in the House Judiciary Committee when it came to marking-up internet-hostile bills like SOPA was refreshing when watched live on CSPAN.
His social-conservatism in other areas, leaves much to be desired, but at least he's not like that scumbag Goodlatte who brought up child-porn as a justification for SOPA every time he got the chance to speak.
I think Maxine Waters was one of the most despicable on the other side of the aisle. The blatant anti-debate "let's all just go home, you're wasting my time" bullshit she was pulling made me want to scream.
The amount of illogic on both sides of the aisle except for a handful of people is disheartening.
Issa understands the Internet, and so do a few others. He is part of a very small minority. The rest are technophobes who have no idea what they are trying to regulate and simply don't care.
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BMO
A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace (Score:5, Interesting)
A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace
by John Perry Barlow
Governments of the Industrial World, you weary giants of flesh and steel, I come from Cyberspace, the new home of Mind. On behalf of the future, I ask you of the past to leave us alone. You are not welcome among us. You have no sovereignty where we gather.
We have no elected government, nor are we likely to have one, so I address you with no greater authority than that with which liberty itself always speaks. I declare the global social space we are building to be naturally independent of the tyrannies you seek to impose on us. You have no moral right to rule us nor do you possess any methods of enforcement we have true reason to fear.
Governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed. You have neither solicited nor received ours. We did not invite you. You do not know us, nor do you know our world. Cyberspace does not lie within your borders. Do not think that you can build it, as though it were a public construction project. You cannot. It is an act of nature and it grows itself through our collective actions.
You have not engaged in our great and gathering conversation, nor did you create the wealth of our marketplaces. You do not know our culture, our ethics, or the unwritten codes that already provide our society more order than could be obtained by any of your impositions.
You claim there are problems among us that you need to solve. You use this claim as an excuse to invade our precincts. Many of these problems don't exist. Where there are real conflicts, where there are wrongs, we will identify them and address them by our means. We are forming our own Social Contract . This governance will arise according to the conditions of our world, not yours. Our world is different.
Cyberspace consists of transactions, relationships, and thought itself, arrayed like a standing wave in the web of our communications. Ours is a world that is both everywhere and nowhere, but it is not where bodies live.
We are creating a world that all may enter without privilege or prejudice accorded by race, economic power, military force, or station of birth.
We are creating a world where anyone, anywhere may express his or her beliefs, no matter how singular, without fear of being coerced into silence or conformity.
Your legal concepts of property, expression, identity, movement, and context do not apply to us. They are all based on matter, and there is no matter here.
Our identities have no bodies, so, unlike you, we cannot obtain order by physical coercion. We believe that from ethics, enlightened self-interest, and the commonweal, our governance will emerge . Our identities may be distributed across many of your jurisdictions. The only law that all our constituent cultures would generally recognize is the Golden Rule. We hope we will be able to build our particular solutions on that basis. But we cannot accept the solutions you are attempting to impose.
In the United States, you have today created a law, the Telecommunications Reform Act, which repudiates your own Constitution and insults the dreams of Jefferson, Washington, Mill, Madison, DeToqueville, and Brandeis. These dreams must now be born anew in us.
You are terrified of your own children, since they are natives in a world where you will always be immigrants. Because you fear them, you entrust your bureaucracies with the parental responsibilities you are too cowardly to confront yourselves. In our world, all the sentiments and expressions of humanity, from the debasing to the angelic, are parts of a seamless whole, the global conversation of bits. We cannot separate the air that chokes from the air upon which wings beat.
In China, Germany, France, Russia, Singapore, Italy and the United States, you are trying to ward off the virus of liberty by erecting guard posts at the frontiers of Cyberspace. These may keep out the contagion for a small time, but they will not work in a world that will soon be blankete
Re:Darrel Issa (Score:5, Interesting)
I don't think Issa fully understands. Look at #10 of his Bill of Rights:
Property - digital citizens have a right to benefit from what they create, and be secure in their intellectual property on the internet
The first part sounds okay. But the second part, no. What does "secure" mean here? Worse than that, he said "intellectual property".
He may be opposed to the details of SOPA, but not the essence. He wants some magic way to make intellectual property just work, acts as if it can be done, and seems unquestioning in moving ahead as if it's a good idea.
Then, how about #5?
digital citizens have a right to ... be held accountable for what they create
That's not a right! That's some kind of obligation.
Re:blindly regulating (Score:2, Interesting)
I have kids that will foot their incredible tax bill.
That's only *IF* they survive the coming collapse, the famines, the riots & violence, the government crackdowns, mass re-locations, and the "re-education" and forced-labor camps.
Strat
Re:Government actually working for the people (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm guessing the fact that all those silicon valley megatech companies that opposed SOPA fall in his jurisdiction and are potential campaign contributors may have helped a teeny bit...
Re:Darrel Issa (Score:2, Interesting)
Copyright is _meant_ to expire and soon
No, copyright is life of the author + 70 or 90 years, I forgot which, it keeps getting longer. There is no "soon" about it. You only believe this because you stopped paying attention to copyright law in the 70s.
And as far as corporations are concerned, they'll just keep extending it forever. That's the reality.
To be fair, the parent specifically said "meant to", while you specifically said "is".
These two things are both true, and goes to show how wide the gap between what it should be and what it is.
That is also the root of the complaint. Personally I have no issue with copyright as it was meant to be, but have huge issues with what it is.
Most likely the best proof of this is the original copyright laws.
First, the constitution had an amendment (Article 1, section 8) stating vaguely what copyright should be.
Second, a specific law was written (Title 17) and the first part was interpreted as 28 years max. This was an initial 14 years, with the option to renew for another 14.
There have been many changes between #3 and #now, but currently it is interpreted to be 180 years on average.
The question is, if "limited time" as stated in the constitution was intended to mean ~180 years, then why was the first iteration of the law only providing for 28 years?
The answer is that the first iterations were correct, and the current ones are not. Otherwise it would have been closer to 180 years the first time the laws were written. If those first laws happened to be around a three digit number of years instead of two, then one could argue the current laws are more in sync with the intent of the law, but this is simply not the case.
Re:Government actually working for the people (Score:5, Interesting)
I heartily agree that unions have helped with "safer working conditions, weekends, paid vacations, sick leave, and a host of other things ". However, they have also failed miserably when it comes to things like nonsensical work rules, seniority, and protecting useless workers.
The one example I can give is my first job (which was a union posiiton). There was a guy who used to hide in the toilet to read the paper or sleep. There was another guy who ran a vitamin supplements business from his desk. They were useless workers and yet every year we got the same pay raise. Management (also useless) tried to get rid of them several times, but the union reps always managed to save them.
In an ideal world, I would like to have the benefits that unions have brought without the the soul sucking lowest common denominator mentality that holds back conscientious workers.
Re:Government actually working for the people (Score:5, Interesting)
Did you read it? Looks pretty scary to me:
"5. Creativity - digital citizens have a right to create, grow and collaborate on the internet, and be held accountable for what they create"
No more creating anonymous posts on the internet.
"10. Property - digital citizens have a right to benefit from what they create, and be secure in their intellectual property on the internet"
lay ground work for SOPA 2.0