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A Digital Citizen's Bill of Rights
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."
I more or less agree, but still, it doesn't hurt to go actually make a reasonable plea on the site, as they're asking you to. This is one form of resistance against such things, just because it's not nearly enough by itself is no reason to acquiesce to the establishment. Congress and corporate america are genuinely completely out of touch with the realities of the 21st century, so it'd do more good to bitch about it there, not here. The Ron Paul people actually got involved in the Republican party this election cycle (not to glorify the tea-partiers), infiltrated the nominating and committee process and such, which is what the rest of us should have been doing with the entire government instead of bitching about not having any choices in the Obamney election. MoveOn.org is sort of trying this now with their Candidate Project deal. Why not use it as a chance to continue mounting actual resistance to the SOPA/PIPA/ACTA/etc. agenda, instead of just declaring it hopeless prematurely. The population of the internet is huge and has the potential to exert a lot more economic influence on the government's agenda than special interests like the MPAA do, people just haven't woken up and realized that yet.
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
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
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
Progressivism (aka US 'Liberalism'): Ideas so good they need a police/surveillance-state to enforce.
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...
Unicode killed the ASCII-art *
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.
Self awareness - try it!
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
Paying taxes to buy civilization is like paying a hooker to buy love.