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What Should Be In a Technology Bill of Rights?
snydeq writes "The Deep End's Paul Venezia argues in favor of the creation of a Technology Bill of Rights to protect individuals against malfeasance, tyranny, and exploitation in an increasingly technological age. Venezia's initial six proposed articles center on anonymity rights, net neutrality, the open-sourcing of law enforcement software and hardware, and the like. What sort of efficacy do you see such a document having, and in an ideal world, which articles do you see as imperative for inclusion in a Technology Bill of Rights?"
The prohibition of off-topic FP!
Net neutrality, Linux on desktop, Duke Nukem 4 Ever, cheap macs, freedom from malware, peace in the middle east and a cuddly Tux for all.
"XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve your problem, use more." - Anonymous Coward
Thu shall not commit spam.
The Long Now Foundation
Er, the right to defend yourself against the evils of viruses, malware, and if I dare to be redundant, DRM.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
Oh, wait, the Constitution is routinely ignored by the Federal Government. So I'm sure a non-binding technology bill of rights will have a huge impact on limiting the Federal Government's actions...
Intel is going to publish their chip designs now?
Prosser: "Have you any idea how much damage that bulldozer would suffer if I just let it run straight over you?"
Arthur: "How much?"
Prosser: "None at all."
What should be in a "Technology Bill of Rights"
Current technology makes it easy and difficult for law enforcement to capture and seize and retain
equipment, information, and data of or about or owned by a target of an investigation or persons
tangential to the target of said investigation. Technology also makes it possible and not unreasonable for
persons visit, collect, dispose of, and maintain data over a variety of devices, streams, and locations.
Persons under investigation or not under investigation shall not be required to live their lives as if
they must be at-the-ready to facilitate Law Enforcement to bring charges against said person or persons
related to the subject of an investigation. People today use computers to facilitate communication,
operation of business, continuance of education, and to do any number of other things that may be legal or
illegal, but not of an illegality sufficient to warrant seizure (even if remote search and surveillance
are conducted) of the equipment.
Unnecessary, spiteful, specious, punative and groundsless search is disturbing and seizure detrimental if
not permanently destructive to the privacy or conduct of business or education of persons who ultimately
are not arrested or are arrested but released on Own Recognizance or for lack of cause or for
technicalities or procedural abberations in violation of subject's rights.
Therefore:
Persons under surveillance who have not committed a crime nor are being charged with a crime SHALL NOT
have their personal property seized. Seizure may occur in extremely grave situations of bona fide national
security or flight risk concerns, but ONLY IF the person is in an immediate position of destroying data
that was not already captured via technical means which may or may not be disclosed to the subject nor the
subject's attorney.
Persons who voluntarily offer to law enforcement an opportunity to reasonably copy target's data
concurrent to/related to the scope of the investigation SHALL NOT BE SEPARATED from the investigation and
SHALL BE ALLOWED personal or technical proxy representation, full custody of, and a written receipt or
copy log of what os obtained.
Law enforcement shall arrive to the premises equipped to take copies of data by whatever means devices
allow the recording of data which may be stored on equipment as old as 25 years or current. The ill-
preparation of LE to copy data SHALL NOT JUSTIFY seizure nor freezing of subjects' assessts simply for
convenience of Law Enforcement. Only in extremely grave cases of risk of destruction of information shall
LE be permitted to monitor "that last bit" of uncaptured information via orders to a subject (by now
compromised) to not destroy information.
If LE determines a person or business warrants surveillance, it should be publicly expected that by the
time a subject is arrested or detained and removed from home or business, LE should have by technical
means obtained what it needed. The seizure of equipment shall result in the turning over of the equipment
to a NEUTRAL THIRD PARTY who will not buckle to police, nor allow the pending-defendant's counsel to
tamper with evidence.
Previously: "Linux... Toward the Sunrise..." Now: "Linux... Toward the-- No, now, part of Every Sunrise"
Strict separation of state from goatse terror regime.
Or did the frist post already address that?
Fuck systemd. Fuck Redhat. Fuck Soylent, too. Wait, scratch the last one.
The right to opt out of phorm and similar scams. And an obligation for computer users across the world to keep their networked machines patched.
A reference to the Book of Armaments has to be in there somewhere.
The American founding fathers, from whom the Bill of Rights came, viewed rights a inherent to all individuals and not something granted by men. Either from God, or inherent in nature (or actually both, to my understanding).
These rights are what is referred to as "negative rights". Basically put, that you can do just about anything so long as it doesn't infringe on another's well-being. Everything in the Bill of Rights demonstratably follows from that--that the government shall not interfere. But it doesn't grant you special privileges, either--nothing that requires one else give it to you (well, with some exceptions like right to a speedy trial).
To then go on to talk about a Bill of Rights as some arbitrarily-agreed upon standards is ridiculous and on some level scary, because it implies your humans rights and worth is something up for democratic debate and potentially is yet another chip on the political bargaining table.
You don't have to be an adherent to natural law (I'm not) to feel or believe in that. No so-called "Bill of Rights" should demand that other private entities ought to give you special privileges or concessions based on some mob rule decision. No wonder Democrats so frequently assume that the 2nd amendment means something that it doesn't--they believe (or at least, appear to believe) that rights and apparently human dignity are government-granted...!
.. is pointless unless we have a system that protects it. Do we have technology courts? Technology judges? Technology prosecutors? Can the goverment protect me from Spam and Virtuses? In response though, I would really like to see the right to be happy while using technology. Happiness to me comes in the form of, no spam, no viruses, no intrusion of any sort. That being said, it may make a criminal 'happy' if he'she commits a crime, so a bill of rights yes, but a rule of law that goes along with it.
TOP DSLR Cameras Reviews of the top DSLRs
the first article there, of course, is to allow customers of licensed entertainment to use the material as the copyright law allows. and that is reflected in "fair use."
you have to buy something sometime. once you have done so, as long as you own the original licensed copy, you can replicate it on other gadgets for more convenient use. as long as you only use ONE at a time, and don't give any of it away to non-licensed users.
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
1. Right to access the internet if you pay for it
2. Right to control what software is on your computer
3. Right to copy anything you own for your own personal use
4. Right to use software that does not interfere with anyone else's right
5. The Right to publish any information that is true without fear of takedown notices
6. The Right to possess any information
7. The Right to control your own hardware
8. The Right to use any device for any purpose that does not interfere with rights of others
9. The Right to remain anonymous
10.The Right to have free, uncensored speech on your own servers
Have all these and we would have a good start.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
These things have a habit of A) never becoming law and B) being subverted if and when they do become law.
For example:
Article 2: No network provider may constrain or restrict access to the Internet in any way, shape, or form other than agreed-upon access speeds
Really: Cart Blanche to do any amount of illegal acts on the net without fear of having your use cut off? Really? Required car analogy: I can do anything in my car as long as I don't exceed the speed limit? Really? You've thought this thru, have you Paul?
Article 3. No individual shall be held liable for effects of malware or malicious code unknowingly run on a personal computer
This exonerates those who write malicious code. They release a virus to the internet, but have no knowledge of which computers it becomes installed on. Therefore, they are not liable.
Number 4: Why should anyone be obligated implement mandatory update checks in any software?
What if I don't want my software calling home?
The more you read this screed the less well thought out it becomes.
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
1.) No top-down censorship. If a person wants to censor their own site, fine. If a person (the owner of the internet connection in question) wants to censor their own experience, fine. But if they don't want to, they don't have to, and no consequences. This must include even illegal subjects - go after the people hosting illegal stuff, sure, but do it out in the open. If we let you censor sites we leave ourselves open to censorship of things you just happen not to like.
2.) Net neutrality. No discriminating against traffic by source or content. Charging for volume? Sure. But a user's ISP trying to force a website to pay them for preferential treatment... no.
3.) (Ideally) freedom of choice at every possible level (DNS, ISP, etc).
... of products people buy after a certain number of years.
One nasty thing about commercial software is that you can't pay other people to fix it because you DON'T have the source. This means many software programs become forcibly obsoleted by autocratic corporate institutions instead of being able to be released into the public domain.
-Full control over the own hard- and software, i.e. no TCM and DRM
(+1, Disagree)
Privacy is the ability to protect ones personal information from others - preventing others from accessing information about yourself.
Anonymity is removing information which could identify a person as a specific individual from a group.
These two ideas are close, but subtly different. Privacy can be an absolute concept - preventing information access and use for certain information can be binary: either others can access it or not. Anonymity is almost never absolute: simply knowing a human posted text has anonymity to 1 in about 6.7 Billion(ish). If you know any other information, the degree of anonymity goes down: Posted online: 1 in 2 Billion, in English: 1 in 400million. A male in the US implies 1 in about 190Million. A person who lives a particular zip code: anonymous to about 1 in 20 thousand. Examining the content one exposes: a person in Chicago, who is interested in the Chicago Cubs, and opposes the fare increase -- digging into details like that can make a person anonymous to about 1 in a few hundred with enough work.
Asserting anything about anonymity must include the idea that anonymity is always a sliding scale, and depends a lot on every bit of information a person chooses to put out into the world.
I do *not* think anonymity is a right, nor should we try to enforce it or preserve it. Anonymity is an anachronism in recent human history. People act better when they know they are not anonymous.
Privacy protections on the other hand are very important. Personal information sets, socially defined, that one chooses to protect and chooses to prevent others from being able to access of use once they have it are extremely important, and should be promoted and protected strongly.
Well, if you take the United States model, and applying it to employers and other non-government powers:
*Freedom of religion: Freedom of hardware- and software-platform choice
*Freedom of speech and press: The right to point out flaws in hardware, software, and methodologies without fear of retribution
*Right to assemble and petition: Right to suggest changes to the way things are done, individually or as a group
*Keep and bear arms: Form unions, trade associations, user's groups, and other collectives who can monitor and if necessary check the power of employers, industry, the government, and even end users should their collectives become too powerful
*Protection from quartering of troops: It's my computer, not yours. No freeloading my CPU cycles or keeping me from what I want to do with it without permission. I payed for my fancy video card, don't you go blocking it *coughDRMcough*
*Unreasonable search and seizure: You can have my encryption keys after you pry them from my cold, dead brain cells.
*Due process, etc: Police should need court review before intercepting communications or seizing data, including meta-data like communications logs or cell-phone locations. The bigger the potential for abuse or the consequences for getting it wrong, the more court oversight.
*Trial by jury, speedy and fair trial, confront withnesses, etc.: All evidence should be examined in a court of law and all technology used to gather evidence subject to scrutiny by defense experts for the purposes of mounting a defense. This trumps trade secrets. If a computer that is itself not illegal to possess is allegedly used to commit a crime, either prove that it was used in a crime quickly or give it back before it depreciates to nothing.
*Civil trial by jury: Sorry, I got nothing.
*Excessive bail and cruel and unusual punishment: Except in prison, don't deny the use of technology which is necessary for the living of a modern life, except in very narrowly tailored cases and for a minimal period of time, and then only as a parole condition.
*Not a complete list of right. 'nuff said.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
Governments are the only ones who violate us using our technology. Remove the government to solve 99% of problems. The rest can be solved privately and personally.
If the result or output of a software program is to be used as evidence in court, then the code of that program needs to be made available to the court for analysis.
In 20 years it's going to be a no-brainer that if you're using the output of an algorithm as legal evidence then the algorithm should be up for scrutiny, so I'm not sure why people have difficulty understanding that now (especially as it relates to things like voting machines and breathalyzers).
"Our two-party system is like a bowl of shit looking at itself in a mirror." - Lewis Black
1. Yes
2. Yes
3. Bad idea. The enormous range in user perceptiveness (from those who wouldn't recognize an exploit if it popped up a dialog saying "Let your computer be pwnt by teh China? Y/N" to those who run multiple hardware firewalls, IDSes and remote loggers) and the difficulty of creating an objective metric for what constitutes "malicious" and "unknowingly run" will make this a nightmare.
It's called "personal responsibility" folks: You are responsible for your computer and what it does. If you can prove that you took reasonable measures to prevent whatever badness happened from happening, you get off scot free. Bonus: Attaches a risk and cost to being a dumbass online at last.
4. Torn, and it's a sticky problem as TFA says...
5. Yes
6. Yes
1. You have the right to pay whatever we ask.
2. You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say will probably be ignored, or used against you.
3. You have the right to remain ignorant. We will not tell you anything unless you ask specific questions.
4. You have the right to arbitration, by an arbiter we choose, which will be binding towards yourself.
5. You have the right to cancel anytime, subject to minimum cancellation penalties.
Thats all I find necessary. I'm sure the RIAA and MPAA can find more rights for us to enjoy.
Article 1. Any individual shall be able to choose anonymity when posting to Internet sites
I disagree with this. While I do believe in the fundamental right to anonymity, it is totally up to the sites owners to make them anonymous or not. For example, lets say this happened to Facebook, you would be instantly hit by a whirlpool of spam, bots, etc.
I believe you have a right to remain fundamentally anonymous, for example I believe in the right to be able to use temporary anonymous e-mail accounts, the right to use Tor and other anonymity proxies, You should have a right to remain anonymous if you so choose, however sites should have the right to require registration to maintain the sanity of the site. But, similarly allowing anonymous postings on a site should be a right for the owners of the site too.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
Material you create on an electronic device is *yours* and if that is encrypted or "protected" by some third party technology you always have the right to break that technology to get to the content you rightly own.
Yes.. this is directly in contrast with the DMCA... and it's outrageous.
But not one that defines "technology" as "teh intertubes". We have been deeply and irrevocably dependent on technology for millennia (hint: Weaving is technology. Cooking is technology. Agriculture is technology). A "technology bill of rights" that described individual rights to technology in the broad sense would be interesting and possibly desireable. One that focuses on "technology" as defined by the newsies would deal only with transient superficial issues with the particular gadgets currently in vogue and would be at best silly.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
People must have a right to commicate arbitrary information without interference. If copyright law says they don't, then copyright law is wrong and must be abolished.
Relax, you needn't worry your pretty little heads over this stuff of which you know nothing, let your friends at Microsoft write it for you; you'll like it....really, you will....it will be against the law not to.
Thou shalt not use Open Source software unless thou payest Microsoft loadsa cash. Thou shall get a discount if thou uses Open Source on Windows. Thou shall be treated as a terrorist if thou uses Open Source on Linux.
That kinda sounds more like a commandment from God but you get the joke.....right? I'm looking at the M$ astroturfers here since their sense-of-humour.exe seems to have crashed at times.
As much as this will be modded as either a Troll or FlameBait when it's supposed to be funny, it's probably more true than we'd like to admit and certainly more true than we'd like. The only exaggerated part is that it won't just be Microsoft seeking to write it for us, they will only be co-authors.
I'd say the most important right is the right to know the true identity of the person sending you V14GR4 spam, so that you can (if you so choose) track them down and kick their ass! Of course, this is more of a technical problem (the current email system is severely flawed) than a legal one.
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
http://makezine.com/04/ownyourown/
People act better when they know they are not anonymous.
And I'm not really a coward!
Don't read my sig.
"The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has it's limits" - Albert Einstein
This reminds me of something that came up when I was doing some research in a university course years ago.
"Freedom of the press" means freedom of the *owner* of the press to print what him/her sees fit. Nobody purely has the right to have something they wrote printed anywhere. You have the right to go buy your own press or you have the right to rent someone else's press (which makes you a "temporary" owner), but no one has the right to go to their local newspaper, for instance, and insist that they print their letter to the editor. If you want something printed you play by their rules and that determination is made by the owner of the press, not the government.
Here's how I think this applies here: the owner of the web site has the right to allow anonymity or to not allow anonymity. You don't have the right to have something printed on a web site you don't own unless you play by their rules. It's the owner of the web site's call, and allowing anonymous postings is the call of the owner of the web site, not the government. I think that's the right that should not be infringed.
This is a great idea. I have been releasing a 'user rights' doc with software I work on for awhile now.
.ini files, registry changes)
Here's one of the things I wanted to include:
The user has a right to know what ports on their machine will be used for any communication, and the locations where software makes changes to their machine (install locations, save locations,
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
Campaign finance laws need to be fixed first, otherwise these rights will be nothing more than amusing discussions for MAFIAA lobbyists.
Why do we need a bill of rights concerning technology. Doesn't the 10th amendment already cover this?
Always be careful when you define rights! If you enumerate them, they are often assumed by the gov't that these are your ONLY rights. This holds for both defining rights positively or defining what the government cannot do.
Look at the rife abuse of the 2nd, 9th, and 10th amendments!
All Knowledge is Human Knowledge!!!
Start with that premise, and then restrict defaulting back to that assumption unless otherwise specifically restricted for good reason. Similar concept of State and individual rights structure found in the U.S. constitution (well in theory anyway).
It does not belong to one company, it does not belong to one person, or country, it belongs to the humanity. No one thinks up the next great invention in a vacuum. They went to school, they read other peoples ideas, they used a human language to express it. It belongs to humanity.
Yes, there should be certain restrictions on who can make use of the knowledge (e.g. how to make atomic bombs, what I had for breakfast), but without compelling reason it should default to the public domain.
Living in Chile
A technology bill of rights should have zero items, but thinking about tech is a good excuse to review/update what rights people have.
But that list should be invariant, whether we're talking about intergalactic-warp-travelling nano-enhanced genetically modified cyber-transhumans, or cave men whose highest tech is ability-to-start fire.
Your rights are your rights, and technology doesn't have a damn thing to do with it.
"Believe me!" -- Donald Trump
TFA is wrong in three different ways: morally, politically, and practically.
Its proposals are morally wrong because they trample on individual freedom. For instance, #1 says "Any individual shall be able to choose anonymity when posting to Internet sites." Okay, I run a site that catalogs free books, and accepts user-submitted reviews. When new users register, it's made very clear to the new user that he needs to provide his real name. The reason is that I don't want people reviewing their own books. No, I'm not under the illusion that 100% of people are truthful about this. However, the author of TFA seems to be proposing that the government prohibit me from even setting this as a policy on my site. That's absurd. If users don't like the fact that I require them to give their real names, I can't force them to visit my site.
Politically it's wrong, because he seems to be completely clueless about the nature of individual rights in a constitutional democracy. Individual rights are not about telling A that he has to give B something, or forcing A to associate with B, or telling A that if he wants to do business he needs to act in a certain way. Individual rights have to do with being left alone, especially with being left along by the government. You can believe that the government has other legitimate functions besides safeguarding individual rights, but that doesn't mean that those other functions qualify as individual rights. If you think government should be inspecting cuts of beef to make sure they won't make people sick, then that's a perfectly legitimate, mainstream political opinion in the U.S. -- but it has absolutely nothing to do with any supposed individual right not to get sick.
And finally, he's wrong in practice, because these ideas are all just stupid in the context of, say, the United States in the year 2009. Taking his items one by one:
Find free books.
A lot of these "rights" seem a bit wishy-washy. The US bill of rights works because they are primarily a list of "negative rights" - ie, a list of things the government can't do/take from you. These proposals read more like a list of entitlements (eg, net neutrality, the right to post anonymously) or government contractual obligations (eg, required to use open source). That doesn't necessarily mean that these things aren't desirable, but they don't belong in a bill of rights, imo.
For example, the "right to post anonymously on any internet site". Anonymity is good - but if it's my site, then it's my rules - this clause is a violaion of my property rights as the site owner. Don't like my rules? Post somewhere else. It's a similar case with net neutrality... I know this is a popular cause amongst fellow-slashdotters, but if I provide network access, then I should be able to constrain/restrict access in any way I please (provided I disclosed the rules when I sold access). Don't get me wrong - I want to see access open as well - but this is best served through the market. The only reason it's a problem now is because of government legislation creating huge companies or "regional monopolies", etc...
On a slight tangent: We don't even have a normal bill of rights in Australia - let alone a technological one - but whenever people talk about introducing one (which I love the idea of in principle), they talk of including things like, a "right to a job" and a "right to a free education". This is the challenge in any proposed bill of rights - to ensure they don't become a bill of entitlements to other people's property[1]
[1] Though IP rights are a separate issue here, since there's valid debate about whether or not IP is/should be considered real property or not.
Every single one of the six points is silly.
1. Any individual shall be able to choose anonymity when posting to Internet sites
Well, we've done this one plenty before, but it's still ultimately down to the Greater Internet Fuckwad Theory. With freedom comes responsibility. An anonymous party cannot effectively be held accountable for their actions. QED.
Oh, and please spare us the sob story about a hypothetical oppressive regime where anonymous speech on the Internet will bring the cure for cancer and world peace. This is not the US a few centuries ago. In modern countries where free speech with your name attached is not protected, anonymity on the Internet is pretty far down the list of priorities and hardly going to be the decisive factor in making things better (not least because if you have access to the Internet at all, it's probably strictly monitored by the state and your identity is known before you ever reach a keyboard anyway).
2. No network provider may constrain or restrict access to the Internet in any way, shape, or form other than agreed-upon access speeds
Ah, yes, let's have the lawyers interfere with running the Internet, because that always works out well.
What is wrong with a non-neutral Internet anyway? All that really seems to mean is giving preferential bandwidth to some services over others, and frankly, if you think your five-reader blog is as important as Google or BBC News then you're the deluded one. Likewise, if you see a high-bandwidth future where streaming services and remote applications are popular or even the norm, you'd better start studying economics if you think the current financial models are going to support it.
As for crushing the little guy, I have yet to see an argument that isn't pure FUD. A huge amount of Internet traffic isn't from the big businesses who are really going to be affected by such laws, and there is always going to be a demand for the valuable part of that traffic, creating a market for providing such access. We already have competition laws in place should anyone start actually abusing the system to close out that market artificially, and otherwise, why isn't it just commercial dealing, on which foundation we seem to have managed to get this far?
3. No individual shall be held liable for effects of malware or malicious code unknowingly run on a personal computer
Throw in something about negligence and perhaps. But if you're one of the dumbfucks who connects a computer to the Internet and then spews out lots of spam because you're too ignorant to learn basic security, then you are a liability to the rest of the world and deserve to be cut off until you learn better.
One court case with a stupid outcome does not negate this point, incidentally.
4. A company that produces and sells closed source software for use on computers shall be responsible for the security of that product, and a user has a right to seek damages in the event of a failure to secure their product
Way to go, you just undermined the entire software development world. Little, if any, of the software running on most computers today would have been developed under this model, because there would be no sound business case for taking on such a risk under conditions that will never be perfect. Most consumers, private and business alike, simply don't need — or want to pay the disproportionate cost for — that level of quality.
Oh, and spare us the blatant Open-Source-by-the-back-door pitch, please. If you want to compete, make a better product. Forcing competition out of the market through dubious legal tricks is pathetic when big business tries it to prop up their dying business models, and it will be just as pathetic if the OSS world tries it if it turns out that they don't really make better products after all.
5. Any software or hardware used to conduct or support laws and public policy shall be open-source
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
The right to continue service under the terms which you agreed and the striking of the ability of a service provider to unilaterally alter the terms of service without notice. New service terms must be tied to new services; failure to agree to the new terms must only bar access to the new services and not restrict access to services under the previous agreement. Discontinuation of old services must either include access to equivalent level of replacement service without change to agreement or a discount on the service provided equivalent to the replacement value of the discontinued service to the user.
Any and all changes to agreements must include access to the complete old and new agreements and clear annotations showing the changes, noting both stricken text and additions.
Service overage charges must be in keeping with the charges incurred for the next tier of service or proportional to current service and not be punitive in nature. If overages would be in far excess of expected billing (more than double the previous month's billing), access is to be suspended until authorization for overage is granted. Service provider is responsible for all overages not authorized by the user. User is not responsible for any overage caused by service provider or a third party outside the user's control.
Oh, say does that Star-Spangled Banner entwine / The myrtle of Venus with Bacchus's vine?
called a "bill of rights" is pretty silly. So call it something else. Big deal.
Anyway, here are some items I think should be added to the ones in TFA:
(A) Any digital information published or disseminated to the public by any government agency shall be distributed in an open, non-proprietary format. (This is prompted by my local city bureaucracy insisting on publishing "public" information in the latest version of Word... which a great many people have no way to easily read. Yes, I am aware that Microsoft makes available a free Word reader, but almost nobody outside of IT knows about it.) This would also have the effect of goading software companies to better support open standards.
(B) The fruits of University and other research that is subsidized by public funds belong in the public domain. Repeal the Bayh-Dole act, which sought to motivate University researchers, but which instead has resulted in corporate ownership of publicly funded inventions and discoveries.
If you make it general enough to handle even just basic human rights, it'll be vague enough to game.
If you make it specific, the fascists will claim that it's an enumeration of right and so no other rights exist.
You may recall some of these arguments from the discussion about whether to adopt the US Bill of Rights, or to simply let the Constitution stand on its own.
Also remember, the internet extends beyond just your country.
How about you respect the rights of others first?
How about a bill of responsibilities as well.
There is no "-1 offended" or "-1 you don't agree with me" mod options for a reason.
Seriously? Is what the word means so empty that we can call bad technology policy decisions tyranny? Put another way, are we so cynical about political discussion that we need to use crazily charged words like tyranny to label those who are not as libertene as we like? If so, why are we bothering to have the discussion at all?
Getting sensible policies is important, both in creating a society we'd like to live in and in keeping society as a whole working smoothly, but using words like tyranny so lightly closes discussions and alienates people (plus it makes the user look foolish in front of people who actually know what words mean).
For every problem, there is at least one solution that is simple, neat, and wrong.
No wonder Democrats so frequently assume that the 2nd amendment means something that it doesn't--they believe (or at least, appear to believe) that rights and apparently human dignity are government-granted...!
Except Republicans oppose rights, small "r" not capital, as well. For instance Republicans support Three Strikes Laws and manditory minimum sentencing laws. Though some Democrats support them as well most Republicans love drug laws. During the 2008 presidential campaign only Republican Ron Paul wanted to get rid of these laws. Former Reform politician Jessy "The Body" Ventura has been vocal about getting rid of them too. A few days ago on CNN's Larry King show he said they should be legalized.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
How about nothing.
Nothing good can come out of government regulating the Internet.
the Bill of Rights itself is the product of discussion, debate, and democratic process. Sure, they reflect a means of protecting what at least a significant portion of those discussing and debating thought were fundamental rights in natural law, but they were no less a product of political process than any other law.
Some Founding Fathers like Alexander Hamilton opposed Rights being included in the Constitution. So the Constitution was approved without them but with the understanding that a Bill of Rights would be added as an amendment. They believed that the protection of rights, Capital and small "r", was not needed. Hamilton argued "Here, in strictness, the people surrender nothing, and as they retain everything, they have no need of particular reservations."
But as a previous poster said the USA has moved from a country in which people enjoy "unalienable rights" to one where government has rights and grants them. And both Democrats and Republicans are responsible.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
The right to a independent experts for court cases dealing with Technology that both sides can use and right to be able to use one for free as well as being to have your own.
Any Bill of Rights is impossible today, because I believe it is fundamentally impossible to find a large enough group people to matter that are:
- basically of normal or higher intelligence
- qualified to discuss such topics
- connected enough to matter
- capable of actual altruism
1775 was an exceptional year for humanity, sadly not to be repeated.
-Styopa
you have to buy something sometime. once you have done so, as long as you own the original licensed copy, you can replicate it on other gadgets for more convenient use. as long as you only use ONE at a time, and don't give any of it away to non-licensed users.
Except the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) has made fair use illegal in some cases. Look at the ruckus caused by DeCSS.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
At worst, you destroy the images/videos and write them a ticket.
No, at worse in movies they made teens should be given a lecture.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
1. Any hardware or software product that is no longer sold must have all source code available under an open-source (not necessarily free) license.
2. It must be legal and possible to backup anything that one has paid for.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
I have only one thing to say about that: Shitcock!
10.The Right to have free, uncensored speech on your own servers
Webspace providers don't have the right to censor either.
No, government does not have the right to censor, private entities should be able to control what is hosted on their own servers. If a webhost does not want to serve certain political speech, porn, or anything else they should have to right to refuse to host it. For every one that refuses to host some speech another will be willing to do so. Now those who shouldn't control content are the access, backbone, providers.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
I have a saying that keeps me secure in my house and my office:
"If it comes into my possession, I control it."
What that means is that it does exactly what I say, does not call home unless I let it, does not keep hidden logs, does not have back doors, does not answer to anyone but me or the person I have controlling it. I think if this were phrased in lawyer speak, then that would be all we need from technology.
There would be no DRM, there would be no humans answering to robots, ever, even if the robots were made to be security guards, and that is in progress as we speak. There would be no way a manufacturer could say that you could not use their machine in the way you want.
Article 1 is good, I like that.
Article 2. No network provider may constrain or restrict access to the Internet in any way, shape, or form other than agreed-upon access speeds unless such constraints/restrictions are required by law (i.e. ISPs being forced to take action by a legal order from law enforcement) or are required to stop actions that are negatively impacting on the network providers network
The last bit allows ISPs to block viruses and malware (e.g. cut someone off who is part of a DDOS attack and needs to be cut off because they are flooding th ISPs network or block spam zombies)
Article 3. No individual shall be held liable for effects of malware or malicious code unknowingly run on a personal computer unless they were involved in the creation or dissemination of the malware or malicious code.
This change ensures that if you create or distribute malware, you cant claim "I didn't know my virus was running on that computer, therefore I can't be held liable for it"
I dont really agree with article 4, it puts a chilling effect on software developers. A better way to write this one would be:
Article 4. A company that produces and sells closed source software for use on computers must disclose the existence of (if not the details of) any vulnerabilities discovered in their software and is prohibited from taking any action (under the DMCA or otherwise) against any person carrying out security research on their product or disclosing the findings of that research. In addition, software vendors must patch security holes in their product.
This clause ensures that security research can continue
Article 5, yes I agree on the software front (source code for breathalysers, voting machines, speed cameras etc) should be available. But hardware, no, not unless its a specific part created for the device (so if its a sensor specifically designed to measure alcohol, yes, make that open, but if its just a general purpose part like a NAND gate or a Microprocessor, no, it doesn't need to be open source)
Agree with Article 6
Add some more:
Article 7. No network provider may modify any network traffic unless such modification is part of the normal operation of the network.
This clause prevents ISPs from doing DNS hijacking, web page modifications (inserting ads into pages for example) and other such stuff. It would in no way prevent operation of transparent web page caches (which many ISPs provide)
Article 8. No network provider shall be allowed to provide any customer details (including details linking an IP address with a customer account) to anyone unless they are authorized by the customer to provide that information, have a valid law enforcement order (warrant etc) or a valid order from a court of law. (this prevents the RIAA/MPAA/etc from simply asking ISPs to provide details of "alleged" file sharers)
Article 9. Any software, hardware or technology produced by the government or produced at the using government money (including research carried out using government money) will be freely available for everyone to use unless there is a legitimate need to keep it secret (e.g. military hardware or secret spy software installed on a computer in a foriegn government somewhere)
Article 10. Anyone who is holding personal data (including addresses, credit card numbers, social security numbers, bank account details and health details) will be required to notify the public (and more specifically anyone affected) if they have evidence that any of the data they are holding may have been tampered with or accessed without permission. All companies holding such data will be required to take reasonable steps to ensure that the data they hold is kept secure, including taking any reasonable steps to prevent phishing and password theft (for example, anyone handling this data must ensure that the data is encrypted as it travels from the users PC to the companies servers)
Article 11. All data produced by the government and made available to the public will
If they really were inalienable, how come they're violated on a regular basis around the world?
To be fair to the software publishers how about the right to remove and/or disable, and aid others to remove and/or disable, any DRM that in any way restricts the fair use rights of the user.
I'd also go further and require that any software shipping with DRM that restricts any fair use rights should be required to have exactly what rights it restricts, and how it restricts them, labelled on the outside of the box.
I'd like to see something to prevent corporations from making money on annual updates with no real substance. I.E. A major anti virus revision every year at a cost of $30-60 per unit leads me to believe it's corporate greed rather than bonifide programming development which is the driving force. Updates for this would be fine. It seems every company is depending upon term upgrades to make their cash flow instead of quality, and then to control and enforce there cash cow by stopping the licensing, maintenance, etc of the older, but perfectly running product. Some examples would be HDDVD, Digital Transmitting, Operating Systems, and the like, all of which you can see being forced down to users by control, not my want or need.
If we're going to create a "bill of rights", then we should be careful that those rights are negative rights--that is, rights which prohibit taking certain actions (such as a right to be anonymous, which really is a right prohibiting authorities from requiring my personal information be gathered and stored), and not positive rights--that is, "rights" which require someone else to cede control or perform certain actions on my behalf. (For example, a "right" to a computer is a positive right--because it requires someone to give me a computer.)
I'm all for piling up the negative rights--after all, they prohibit government from making me do things or making other people do things on my behalf. But positive rights are essentially demands on other people to act on my behalf--and that's no longer a "right", when you get right down to it.
In that context, I can see calling for a right to anonymity, a right to tinker with hardware I own, and a right to free speech on-line regardless of location or local laws. In all three cases we can limit the definition to restrictions on government: government doesn't have the power to discover my identity online, government doesn't have the power to prosecute me if I tinker with hardware I own, government doesn't have the power to prosecute me for speaking my mind. (And I read the "right to anonymity" as meaning I have the right to lie when asked by a web site for my personal identifying information, so long as the lie does not allow me to steal services fraudulently.)
But the rights outlined in the original article (besides anonymity) are all positive rights--they require the other person to behave in certain ways. Network neutrality, for example, requires that ISPs build their networks according to certain, externally imposed standards.
While I'm for net neutrality, I'd be far more comfortable if that was codified as a law rather than enumerated as a fundamental right.
... to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.
Send your spendthrift head of state this
A unicorn in every stable and a fairy in every pot.
If you're going to make up a document that is never going to happen you might as well go for broke..
Opt in.
Opt out and that means the sort of bullshit, "Hey, we sent you a letter/email that might have looked like spam and could have been filtered out that said we're doing this and requesting you raise a fucking racket about it to get out of it."
No. Neither that nor terms of use changes that are agreed to by logging in (think it was Facebook that did that). 'course if we get that, that means shrinkwrap licenses and EULA stuff would (should) be illegal.
I do not believe any of the items mentioned should be considered "right"s. You pay your money, you take your chances.
Making an exemption for Open Source software in the Security article is particularly galling. If you're going to do something like that, you might as well abbreviate the whole document to:
Article 1: Thou shalt have source code for every piece of software that you run on your computer.
And even I do not believe in that to be a right.
This line of thinking is extremely important.
We like to think of our human rights as timeless and eternal, but think about this -- how much since would the freedom of the press in the second amendment make if we never had Gutenberg's printing press? In other words, what we think is important is dependent on our technological environment.
That being said, we live in an age where almost all of our actions can be tracked and aggregated online. All our our movements ( cellphone GPS ), our purchases, our medical records, our contacts and interactions ( multi-person GPS interactions and phone and email logs).
I think a beginning of an electronic bill of rights is the right to use end-to-end strong encryption and anonymizing technologies. Sure, you could say that you can be free from tracking, but how would you know? If you have a right to use encryption or anonymous communication, you can rest more assuredly that you're not being tracked or spied upon.
Another idea might be information symmetry. You're allowed to know what other people 'know' or 'say' about you -- sort of like a free credit report, only for everything.
Computers are useless. They can only give you answers.
-- Pablo Picasso
No rules... that's the point, right?
I'd like to see something that forbids manufacturers from pushing updates that remove or limit features. Apple bricking unlocked iPhones with an update, Creative removing record features in the Zen, etc. When I buy a gadget, I'm exchanging money for a set of features. Manufacturers shouldn't be able to alter the deal after the fact to my detriment, especially since they don't offer compensation for what they remove. Similarly, I'd love to see addressed Verizon's reaming of its customers by locking their phones' features. Verizon advertises phones with lots of features but locks up the functionality so they can make a few cents. You pay for it, you own it - but you can't use it.
Net neutrality is not an individual right because it prevents people from operating a network they own the way they like. An individual right is not connecting to such a network. Saying: if we connect to your network, then you have to be neutral is nothing but tyranny.
\u262D = \u5350
Replying more to all the repliers above me than the parent: you people are completely misunderstanding what was meant by "inalienable rights".
It does NOT mean that it is impossible to infringe on "inalienable rights". What it means is that there are a set of basic rights that apply to all human beings. They are "inalienable" because we desearve these rights by our very existance. However, just because they exist does not make them un-infringeable. What the constitution did by spelling those rights out in the Bill of Rights was make a promise that the US government would not infringe on those 10 basic rights.
The system for discovering violations of these rights tends to be slow, since the government is large and things tend to escape notice for a while or simply take time to become sizeable enough to be noticed. However despite it's slow nature (or perhaps because of it?) the system is very effective, and we have essentially the same freedoms - more in some ways, in fact - that we had at the nation's founding.
Our system was designed around protecting these basic, inalienable rights. Even if the mightiest of the mighty in this land - our elected officials, president, and SCOTUS - manage to screw up the Bill of Rights, there is always a do-over. Laws are constantly neutered or bolstered by the courts, SCOTUS decisions can and have been overturned by other SCOTUS decisions, Amendments to the Constitution can and have been supplanted by new amendments, and the President can and has been impeached.
All this to protect our basic human rights (plus others, sure).
That said, the promise (i.e. the Constitution) was not made to non-US citizens and so US actions outside the US territory are often ignored, and the oppression of other people is always ignored unless it somehow represents a direct threat to the freedom of US citizens.
That's just the way it goes.
Security is mostly a superstition... Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. - Helen Keller
any protocol and/or format used between any two or more separate legal entities must be in the public domain. Not allowed to encapsulate a private protocol/format within a public one to circumvent this.
All IP (patent and copyright) is limited to a single generation (as defined by the length of time between birth and the legal voting age => currently 18 years). No generation should be able to "lockup" a following generation.
Fair use of IP is clearly defined in IP law and not just a pile of case law.
Without having authority to enforce it, or being willing and able to enforce it by assuming authority, such a document is simply a set of assertions. As a purely academic exercise and basis for discussion, the concept is admirable. But without it being accepted as its own source of authority or being associated with such a source (such as the Bill of Rights of the US constitution) or else being a summary of rights bestowed by an external authority with the means and ability to enforce the laws from which the summary is derived (such as the Patient's Rights statements offered at most US hospitals -- maybe elsewhere?), it remains purely academic.
Most statements that assume the assertions therein are rights fail to account for the corresponding duties. In order for something to be a right, there must be a corresponding duty to validate, protect and enforce it (except "natural" rights which are assumed a priori as valid rights; even so, these are a rewrite of "God given" rights, authority from the ultimate source). When the work is a summary based on existing laws, the authority behind those laws has the duty to enforce them (indeed, may have been created at least in part for this purpose). without such authority, or when there is such an authority but it hasn't been consulted as to whether it will validate them as rights and agree to protect them, the work is simply a list of good ideas.
In this particular instance it appears as though most of the assertions are derived from and are protected by existing laws (at least in the US). Unfortunately it also seems to be a summary of those laws which have been significantly eroded as of late. While the work may not carry authority, it can serve as a starting point for protecting the rights it claims and for regaining the eroded portions of the laws from which it is derived.
Of course this too is academic. I taught this stuff as an introduction to bioethics. It comes from philosophy. In my opinion philosophy exists in large part to debate such things. I fully expect most of it could be argued against. Hell, I could, thanks to philosophy. In any case there's a decent summary of rights and duties at http://www.osjspm.org/rights_and_duties.aspx . Despite being Catholic social teaching, it is fairly even handed.
"I may be synthetic, but I'm not stupid." -- Bishop 341-B
It is imperative that every individual has the right to opt out of
technology if that person so desires.
Forcing people to adopt technologies is tantamount to economic
slavery due to predictable obsolescence.
Nothing, absolutely nothing, should be in a "technology bill of rights". Why?
Simply put, the more thoroughly you define the 'shall not' ('shall not infringe') and 'shall' clauses ('the people are to be secure in their persons and effects') the more wiggle room is given to 'experiment' around the edges.
For instance, while not perfect (in today's understanding/nomenclature), the US Bill of Rights is short. it was was even shorter when conceived (some would argue to the better), but it has covered every single right in this country for 230 years. Yes, there is case law to iron out the specifics as the need arises, but the general principles are pretty damn clear cut.
At least in the US, this bullshit (the perceived need for a Technology Bill of Rights) is not necessary. Things like DRM, Trusted Computing, etc. could all be put to the courts under the "secure in one's person and effects" clause of the bill of rights. And you could assign pretty much anything as a corollary. Hell, what is an "arm"? Could you say that it's a constitutional right to be possess purely offensive digital tools in a largely digital world?
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
responsible for their products as hardware companies are? I'm talking about being able to return for refund a buggy product such as a Windows OS. Maybe if people are given the option M$ will be forced to improve product quality.
nuf said. Inventing is basic human behaviour. A right to use independently discovered things. A right to use whatever you came up with.
Actually, I'll call bull on that. There is no such thing as some free-floating rights that exist by themselves and they're not self-evident at all. All those rights are basically a contract between the members of society.
Basically "right to life" for example just means, in a nutshell, I don't want to be killed, you don't want to be killed, so we make a truce that we won't kill each other. That's it, really.
A lot have to do with basically just a list of abuses that those in power did before. And at some point the barons got together, took up arms and made the king write "I will not sentence people without a jury" on the blackboard 100 times... err... wrong movie. Made him sign the Magna Carta, which was really just a list of stuff that everyone was sick and tired of having done to them.
Most of that stuff isn't self-evident at all, and humanity needed literally thousands of years to figure out that they have this or that right. Some is actually from the Romans or Greeks, the result of hundreds of years of struggle between factions or social groups. (E.g., first between Patricians and a horrible Etruscan king, and then between those of Patrician and Plebeian descent.) And they needed a long time to be figured out, they didn't just spring out already self-evident and inalienable.
Some weren't evident even to the Romans at any point. E.g., there was no freedom of religion, nor separation between church and state. Indeed a big argument for more power to the patricians was that supposedly the gods will be pissed off if a lowly plebeian conducts the sacred rites that the consuls (think: president and vice president) had to perform. Yes, that's right: the head of state _had_ to conduct certain religious rituals, and that applied to many other top-level jobs in the republic. Which from the start put limits on what religion you should practice to fit that job. And if you were, say, in the army, you had a list of approved gods that you could worship. Want to be a follower of Moses for example? Not in the Roman army.
Some weren't even clear at the time of drafting the Magna Carta. E.g., it took a _lot_ of religious warfare and millions dead over exactly what flavour of Jesus is the right one, before a bunch of people figured out, basically, "you know, we could all get along better if we stopped trying to shove our personal religion down somebody else's throat." But even that wasn't self-evident to everybody, and to a lot of people it still isn't. Oh, they very much like it when you don't shove your religion down their throats, but they'd very much like to be allowed to shove theirs down your throat. I dare say that even at the time when the founding fathers drafted that "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof" amendment, most of the colonists would still have found it unthinkable if you told them they can't run you out of town -- or in some cases hang you -- for believing in the wrong flavour of Jesus.
Trial by your peers? A mere hundred years before the Magna Carta -- and in many places in the world even centuries _after_ it -- the barons would have more likely fought for the sacred, self-evident and inalienable right (and divine too!) to dispense their own arbitrary justice on their own lands. You know, with the baron being judge, jury and executioner. Ok, employer of the executioner.
So it's all just a contract. And you have exactly as many as you write in that contract. If it's not listed there, you don't have it. If you want more, or new developments create more ways in which you can be shafted, you have to add a bit to the list.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
If the Bill of Rights is modelled on the US one, then no doubt people will want the right to keep trojans and viruses.
In regards to what I think should be in an online Bill of Rights, the right to privacy is key.
There is nothing worse than knowing google, echelon, the Chinese govt and god knows who else has programs trawling through every word you write and ready to cens
If the pattern goes 9am, 10am, 11am, why isn't noon 12am?
NOT an exhaustive list.
In describing you, I say you have two legs, two arms, one head, one anus, 8 fingers 2 thumbs, two eyes, one mouth and two ears.
These are all EXACTLY TRUE.
This doesn't mean you have no willy. Or that you have no toes or feet.
So who gets to pay for the 'free' expert? The other side?
Please, please, please, no more "well-intentioned" broad, sweeping, "reforms" or rights initiatives. Not only do they actually take away the very rights they assert, by putting them directly in the hands of those who would and do abuse them, but this is a band-aid approach to start with. It only futher entrenches the underlying problems.
You can give the Emperor a shiny new suit of clothes, but we can still smell his crusty drawers.
when under contract by employers you can not be held responsable for actions or refusel to break the law.
By that i mean if you are ordered on contract to intall illegal software you can not be fired or sued for refusing and if you are forced to its the resonsbility of the person ordering you to and not youself.
to vote on every law and not on parties that put their own people in place who vote on laws without you having any say in the matter ?
Free speech was meant to be free for all... how can anyone grow up in a nanny state ?
11. The Right to own as advertised - I can't count how many times I purchased something only to wait for a patch, upgrade or just abandon the product because it does not work as advertised. Recommended specs my a55, if it does not work out as recommended don't advertise it until it is ready.
Let me be the Devils advocate a bit here.
First of all I think it is excessively pompous to talk about a "Technology Bill of Rights" - it isn't as if we have been living through an era of extreme oppression after which we have finally reached the Enlightenment. Actually, one could argue that the opposite is the case: that the internet up until now has been a lawless wilderness, where criminals of all sorts thrive and where it is far too easy to get hurt; in short, we need to tame and civilize the internet.
Article 1. Any individual shall be able to choose anonymity when posting to Internet sites
I disagree. The need for whistleblowing would be better served by making special arrangements for protecting the identity of people in certain specific circumstances. Granting anonymity "whenever, wherever" is far too wide-reaching; it is not just poor, oppressed, but honest people who wish to hide their faces. There are already ways of protecting the identity of legitimate whistle-blowers; the company I work for have hired an independent company to which employees can direct their criticism and complaints. It actually works - employees feel comfortable with speaking out, and the employer is able to keep themselves informed about the criticisms without knowing who said what, thus avoiding any unproductive ill feelings.
Article 3. No individual shall be held liable for effects of malware or malicious code unknowingly run on a personal computer
Why not? It isn't difficult to avoid - apart from the lazy option of using a virus-scanner, simply thinking before clicking on anything sent in your mail should do the trick for the most part. Contrary to common belief, most malware atatcks are not the result of somebody breaking into your computer, they happen because you behave stupidly. You need to educate yourself a bit before operating a computer, just like a car - because if you don't, you will end up hurting other people. Perhaps it should be mandatory to pass an internet test before being allowed out.
To be quite honest, I suspect in many ways Americans are the least well-equipped to form a meaningful opinion about what freedoms are essential. American media and culture have for many decades been too much of a hot-bed of word-twisting, to the extent that even many basic concepts have an entirely different meaning to an American as compared to non-Americans. And if people all over the world are to agree on anything big and important enough to be called " Bill of Rights", it will have to be thought through and turned over a very large number of times. Just throwing together a list of your personal gripes doesn't quite cut it, I feel.
NDAs on security related software scream of "security by obscurity." NDAs on software used for law enforcement or government work means that the citizens do not have the right to inspect their own government (national security issues aside, we should expect such a right).
Yes, your competitors have the right to see how your software works. You have the right to see how their software works. You might choose to not grant them the right to redistribute your software, which is something that copyrights are strong enough to enforce.
Palm trees and 8
America is sick of outsourcing and US consumers are going to strike back with a vengeance! India, China, Vietnam, Estonia, Lithuania, etc ... you're all on your own. We will no longer purchase your crappy products and will hang up on you if you attempt to service our products. American companies, heed this warning: Outsource American jobs = you go out of business.
Eliminates spam, idles mail servers, reduces bandwidth utilization, while providing the opportunity to actually have time off while the snail mail winds its way there and back, making you a top performer.
Her lips were softer than a duck's bill, but her quacks
1. The right to kill uncompiled source code
2. The right to free on site tech support
3. The right to free aplus and msce certifications
4. The right to demand an insatiable amount system resources regardless of my purpose or productivity
did i miss anything?
No technology bill of rights is needed! Especially one that locks any organization into only using open source software!
Impeach b.o.!
Impeach all democrats, liberals and progressives!
Remove the czars!
repeal all of the bills made into law since the election!
NO national health care!
No nationalized automotive business or any other business!
Less government!
Stop spending!
Start paying down the deficit!
Stop whining that, "...it's all bushes fault!" No, it's all b.o and the dems. faults! Just watch the factual news FOX news!
Given how much of an authoritarian, centralizer, and advocate of the idea of broad implied government powers Hamilton turned out to be once the Constitution was in force (and, in fact, had already shown himself to be as a member of the Congress under the Articles of Confederation), one might reasonably take his rhetoric about why the Constitution shouldn't explicitly protect individual rights with a grain of salt.
Alexander Hamilton wasn't the only one to oppose Rights being included in the Constitution though. But he was an advocate of a strong central government as well. A good point is that he opposed slavery.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
What about future Fair Use rights?
That is the reason why we have governments. They can change the laws from time to time to account for new circumstances. However I would suggest that any codified rights are broadly stated to avoid the need for frequent updates. For example I would have said that format shifting, provided that only one copy is playing at a time, is one of the fair uses of media and that would cover copying to an iPod/phone etc. as well as a whole host of future devices.
That is the best way eliminate all the email spam clogging the internet if people weren't so greedy.
Sadly, that likely won't happen due to apathy and inertia 'by the masses'.
(Insert Monty Python 'Spam' skit here -- that skit 'predicted' the 'menace' caused by repetative, redundant communication.)