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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."
This seems to be the twilight zone. An politician taking a stand to help protect freedom. Wow.
It might be interesting to monitor what happens to this in a few months time. Will it be simply ignored, shelved or "noted as valuable input" and then ignored. I'm getting a bit pessimistic about common sense and politicians accepting input from the public lately.
I really hope something good will come out of this, but I won't hold my breath.
We don't need an "Internet Bill of Rights." The government just needs to adhere to the actual "Bill of Rights" that's already in the Constitution, and we'll be ok.
Politicians eventually end up consulting "industry experts" (read that as corporate representatives) for advice/bribes to help craft the legislation. Then, we end up with a watered down or punched-full-of-loopholes version of a great idea. We're a full blown fascist government now. There simply aren't enough politicians willing to give up the power and post-Congress paybacks to make something like this happen.
I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
Seems there's a lot of effort to work around them or even outright ignore them. Yes, the new has to be covered. How about protecting what's slipping away?
The people in government who want to control and regulate the internet do not understand that it exists by technical rules, and any policies imposed on it have to be realistic and effeciently capable of implementing. Otherwise these rules and regulations will cripple and defeat the purpose of the network. If the government understood the internet It would stay out of the internet business as much as possible. Eventually a new internet will have to be created outside of their sphere of their interference. Some do exist, many actually, but they are usually less, not more, effecient since they rely on encryption or are simply filtered as most routers would detect them as fragmented packets. Anyone feel like launching a satellite?
If the government really understood the internet, they'd have destroyed it before AOL started offering public access.
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.
--
BMO
I miss my Telegraph Citizen Bill of Rights.
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
"on the internet" is not a valid reason to treat it differently.
That's basically ALL it takes. The rest is handled by the original bill of rights and accompanying laws.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
First, government is flying blind, interfering and regulating without understanding even the basics. Hmm...Sounds like we're off to our typical start in yet another sector. I'm sure the bigger, well-financed firms will send lobbyists and free aides to help them make rules designed to frustrate disruptive startu...er..."dangerously inexperienced firms" messing with nation's critical infrastructure. From the creation of TSA to financial regulators, government's ready to execute smartly to ensure that the digital...um...thing-a-ma-jig you got there runs more efficiently and um...fairly...now that Congress is writing detailed rules controlling it. Maybe we should create a whole new cabinet-level department, with a new set of standard forms, mandatory reports, fees, inspectors, compliance officers and union reps to ensure the digital web thing-a-ma-jigs things are managed with the agility necessary to keep prices low by limiting profits. When investment slows or dries up, Congress can raise the debt ceiling to authorize more borrowing to create "special" public-private infrastructure-investment partnering fund and government-backed investors insurance to...well you know how the story evolves.
Yes I ran a start-up that went up a against a big firm with better access to government rule-making to beat me down and no, I'm not happy about it. I have kids that will foot their incredible tax bill.
http://activepolitic.com:82/News/2012-06-13a/The_Digital_Bill_of_Rights_is_a_sneaky_antipiracy_bill.html
Most industries deal with this sort of thing all the time.
Doctors, heavy industry, power generation, farmers... all of them get handed down legislation by people that often don't know what they're talking about. They often have good intentions and are trying to fix a real problem. But because they don't know what they're talking about it causes problems.
This is why regulations should be kept small and flexible. Understand that people are going to make mistakes and not understand. The system has to anticipate a certain percentage of legislation is going to be stupid. So be it. Just make sure that no one bill can be so influential that it can ever matter. And make sure nothing is written in stone unless everyone really knows what they're talking about.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
People to have full enforceable rights over their data
Corporations are People
Humans are not People
Where is the right to free speech on the internet in this doc? And a corollary of a right to free speech should be the right to communicate anonymously and pseudo-anonymously, without which there can be no safe free speech.
I am getting annoyed with lawmakers calling this or that a "Bill of Rights." We've have the Airline Traveler's Bill of Rights, and the Credit Card User's Bill of Rights, and now this. To call these feeble gestures "Bills of Rights" cheapens the real Bill of Rights.
If the legislature and courts would pay attention to upholding the real, one-and-only Bill of Rights, this Internet "bill of rights" would emerge as corollaries to Amendments #1 and #4.
[Sir Garlon] is the marvellest knight that is now living, for he destroyeth many good knights, for he goeth invisible.
Wish I had a mod point. This is very insightful.
> I think it's very important to try to spread awareness, participation, and encourage elected officials to support such things. I would like politicians keep as far away from the Internet as possible. Even with the best of intentions, meddling from politicians will result in oppression of freedoms we take for granted. First thing they would take away is anonymity so that can “protect your rights”.
"Digital citizen" sounds stupid and isn't any different than any other sort of citizen, unless you're trying to discriminate against people who have had bandsaw accidents. "Person" will do fine.
The focus on the Internet isn't too bad, but why bother? No reason to exclude LANs or (shared?) single node systems. Just lose the "on the internet" part of each one and you've got something just as good.
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
The idea is sound, the implementation is lousy.
5. Creativity - digital citizens have a right to create, grow and collaborate on the internet, and be held accountable for what they create
Since when is the "right to be held accountable" a "right"? This is a clear attack on anonymity, as is the glaring omission of a right to anonymity from the list of bullet points!
I fail to see how most of the things listed have anything to do with the internet. Equality, Association and Privacy are rights we have anyway, so they should already apply to the internet as with everywhere else.
I like that he's got "Sharing" in there and I think I understand why, but we already have freedom of speech and I don't see how this is any more than that.
The bullet on Property is worrying at best. We already have a right to property, are we now trying to codify additional rights for the ill conceived notion of "Intellectual Property"? Is this supposed to imply DRM requirements as a matter of law for all digital "property"? I don't see that this can lead anywhere good.
So yeah, nice idea but horrible details which are either due to innocent misunderstanding or a veiled ulterior motive. Given the source, I'm guessing that the language here is something that some unknown corporate masters thought would be good for them and not something people who know anything about the internet told him would be a good idea.
I want my Cowboyneal
This is a noble measure, but, like the Taxpayer's Bill of Rights, it's unnecessary as long as the government obeys the original Bill of Rights, which they don't. If they are willing to blatantly disobey the original Bill of Rights, which is part of the Constitution, the Supreme Law of the Land, what makes anyone think they will obey lesser laws that are passed? Besides, the 9th Amendment to the Constitution (part of the Bill of Rights) says basically that just because a right is not specified in those Ten Amendments, it doesn't mean citizens don't have them. So that includes the right to a free internet, a big soda, raw milk, and an INFINITE number of rights people have to pursue life, liberty, and happiness so long as it causes no harm to others.
I don't understand the retort. Just because they created it doesn't mean they understood it, or what it would do to their "nightly news" propaganda system.
Aah, change is good. -- Rafiki
Yeah, but it ain't easy. -- Simba
The cited Web page (at Keep the Web Open) has 39 XHTML errors and 71 CSS errors. I cannot read the comments or any details about Issa's 10 points.
No government agency or member of which shall monitor a data line or acquire digital content without a warrant signed by a judge nor shall any government agency acquire digital content from a third party (i.e. ISP) without a warrant signed by a judge.
The US Bill of Rights applies only in the US. So it's fucking useless in the EU, Canada, UK, Australia, anywhere else. This is intended as guideance for non-US govs as well. Dickhead.
Dammit, you're falling into the meta-trap.
It's *worse* than what we *used to have*. The public internet has been here a modestly long time. Remember the good old days of Pets.com, AOL and Meg Ryan and Tom Hanks, Who Had Mail? Remember that the only thing we really could gripe about was AOL mass marketed CD's, Microsoft's OEM games, and the depressing fall of Netscape?
The Internet hasn't really changed since then. Sure, storage has increased, speeds have increased, so what. It's the same good ol' net that served part star trek fan boards, part porn, part business, and part Your_choice_here.
Why then in years such as 2010-2012 has it become this chilling pall over everything, where every lolcat that doesn't have a data authentication certificate risks sending you to jail?
In one sense it's a feeble hope that it took the forces of evil *fifteen years* to crank up their engine of evil. On the down side, now that is IS cranked up, we'll have a hell of a time dismantling it again. Rule #1 in negotiation such as politics or lobbying is not to cave more than 20% of what you have. So being 400% worse than we were 15 years ago, less 20% Boiled-Frog temporary caving, still leaves us miserable.
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
"Will it be simply ignored, shelved or "noted as valuable input" and then ignored"
I'm inclined to believe that is is not a really serious proposal. They will submit it as a bill and do nothing about it "because there are more important things" . When the elections are over tabled and left to die. It will be reintroduced in 2014 in time for the next election.
This crap is beginning to make me wonder if I should re-evaluate the usefulness of visiting /.
I can mend the break of day, heal a broken heart, and provide temporary relief to nymphomaniacs.
This isn't a Bill of Rights. It's a Bill of Restrictions in disguise.
1. Freedom - digital citizens have a right to a free, uncensored internet
"Free" does not appear to be defined anywhere. Is it "free as in beer" or "free as in speech?" Making assumptions is dangerous when it comes to legalese.
On its face, this would restrict a parent from limiting what their child sees on the internet.
5. Creativity - digital citizens have a right to create, grow and collaborate on the internet, and be held accountable for what they create
I've never heard of a "Right to be held accountable." Usually "being held accountable" for something involves taking away rights.
6. Sharing - digital citizens have a right to freely share their ideas, lawful discoveries and opinions on the internet
More restrictions. I have the right to share Lawful discoveries? Who defines what is a lawful discovery? If there is no specific law about my particular discovery, can I share it? This basically requires that I ask permission for my discovery to be declared lawful before I share it.
7. Accessibility - digital citizens have a right to access the internet equally, regardless of who they are or where they are
Great, so now I have to let visitors in my home access my network to get on the Internet even if I don't want to.
9. Privacy - digital citizens have a right to privacy on the internet
Again, restricting parents monitoring their childrens' activities 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
Awesome, so now I can pay for benefits for those who create, even if what they create is worthless. They have a right to benefit, so therefore someone has to pay for those benefits.
Fuck the Republicans and their retard aides who come up with this horse shit.
5. Creativity - digital citizens have a right to create, grow and collaborate on the internet, and be held accountable for what they create
10. Property - digital citizens have a right to benefit from what they create, and be secure in their intellectual property on the internet
When I saw it was a Republican sponsored bill, I was skeptical. Sorry, just my bias that the Republican party represents business rights over individual rights. I added emphasis to two provisions that I think are really just back doors/foundations for later SOPA/PIPA style legislation. Note the term 'digital citizen' - since corporations have personhood, I am sure entities like Reddit and Slashdot would be digital citizens subject to ensuring "their" (ie, user submitted) "creative content" (content and links to content) was not infringing on others intellectual property. This wording is something I will not support.
...that he couldn't resist the opportunity to practice a bit of demagoguery in his announcement.
But, I wanted socialized health insurance!
Huh? I don't understand your point. What is "meta-trap"? What is it that we have now and what did we "used to have?" And what does pets.com have to do with the original Bill of Rights (not the digital "bill of rights but the one found in the Constitution) What chilling pall is over everything? What forces of evil?
Hi there.
By "meta-trap" I am referring to how the mood of an age used to include certain tacit understandings of how things worked. Easy example: In the 80's and even 90's, you could make mix tapes and mix CD's with your friends and really didn't have to worry about it. If you weren't selling them, it went below the radar. Now, if you bit-torrent something off the wrong site too many times you risk losing your internet.
Look carefully at the nature of the types of laws being tossed around - SOPA, which we beat, ACTA, which we're barely holding a draw against, and for the sinker, Daryl Issa's "Digitial Bill of Rights". Except that "D. B. R." includes *more* clauses favorable to the media industries than there used to be "under the radar" 14 years ago, circa 1997. That's the Meta-Trap - take away half of what uses we used to enjoy, call it 50% better than the blinding evil of something like SOPA, and then trumpet its praises.
I mentioned Pets.com because it was one of the signature sites of Web 1.0. They were on the Superbowl ad set, etc. Remember basically how carefree it was then. Everyone borrowed from everyone else on Geocities, or Angelfire, radios were filled with Dot-Com 22 year old CEO's, and some of us were having a good time. All the best memes came from about 1997-2003, including Slashdot's. (We haven't had a good new meme in 8 years.) Now look at the stunning array of Lockdown attempts both on the governmental and the corporate level. Notice that the raw technology really hasn't changed! You still sign on to the net, you still do stuff, sure there's more video bandwidth now, but that's it, sorta. Except now the powers that be are doing their desperate best to create potholes that make the web more complicated to use.
And it's going to get worse. I'll go out on a limb and say the current crop of players we have is basically it for a while. Microsoft as usual, Apple is more recent, Google got evil, Facebook obliterated MySpace for marketshare and has the funds to stay put, your choice of three more. Meanwhile on the governmental level, they're pushing hard to reduce both anonymous and internet handles and increasing censorship.
Since both the basic tech is in stasis and so are the corporate players, all that's left is we're staring at ourselves in the big global fishbowl, except the powers of control have had time to catch up. And if you think I'm being paranoid, as I write this look 5 stories up and see that NYCL has just returned with a report on the new Jamie Thomas Appeal by the RIAA.
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine