If you look at a lot of old-fashioned documents like this - statements of principle, resolutions and declarations of one sort or another - you're likely to see a list of individual points, often making demands or other calls to action. But this will invariably be preceded by a preamble that indicates (a) who the specific people making the declaration are, and what their motivations are for doing so, (b) who the intended audience is, and what action, if any, is expected from them.
This declaration lacks both of these important bits of information. We have a list of imperative bullet points - do this, don't do that - but no elaboration as to why these are desirable, to whom they're desirable, and who is expected to act on the imperative instructions.
At best, it's a set of vague, aspirational intentions; at worst, it distracts us away from developing practical strategies for actually protecting internet freedom.
If you like a little more rolling thunder in your declarations, it's hard to beat John Perry Barlow's Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace. It's a bit dated -- it was written back in the days when people un-ironically talked about "cyberspace," and it shows -- but there's some insightful vision beneath the poetic hyperbole.
Your other arguments notwithstanding: Vagueness is not a bug, it's a feature.
If you make a specific political request, only those people and groups that share precisely those values will support you. Most people -- even those who have a lot in common with your views -- will simply ignore the request.
On the other hand, if you make it somewhat vague, lots of people will feel represented by the statement. We might not agree whether taking down copyright infringement is censorship or not, but we can agree that censorship is bad.
I'm sure this is a common technique in this kind of grassroots campaigning.
I don't think it's an effective strategy at all. You're building a coalition of 'support' based on vague, positive-sounding platitudes, and this precludes you from being able to take any specific strategic action without damaging your 'support'.
See: modern politics, in which candidates are elected based on purely symbolic rhetoric, but actual policy-making is dominated by narrowly-defined factions that can act decisively toward specific goals.
It's a balancing act, no doubt. But for something like a declaration of internet freedoms I think it's fair to err on the side of being broadly representative. And I don't think it's anywhere as bad as you make it sound, it's ambiguous, but Don't censor the Internet. is not a vague, positive-sounding platitude.
"Don't censor the Internet" - Who are you talking to? What constitutes censorship? What actual means will prevent censorship, and how can we implement them?
You're just saying that censorship is bad, which is almost a tautology, because the term itself carries negative connotations with essentially everyone: people who do advocate what you might describe as censorship aren't describing their own position as censorship, and the fault lines in your base of symbolic 'support' will appear once you actually get into details and attempt to answer the questions above.
The same thing can be said about the bill of rights and similar documents, and there, fault lines do appear once you get into the details. That doesn't mean it's pointless to have these documents.
For example, what does "universal access" mean? How about "free to connect"? Is this declaration demanding that access to the internet be free to all? As in no cost?
The language "access" to this or that has been subverted in recent years to mean that the accessed resource should be free of charge. E.G. universal access to (free) healthcare. That is decidedly not what accessible means.
So I won't be supporting this declaration. I can't tell if it is demanding Free Internet, which is not a universal right.
If we stick to a reasonable interpretation of rights, that maintains the distinction between having a right and having the object of the right, I see no reason not to regard internet access as a fundamental right (or, more appropriately, as a facet of the fundamental right to free association and free communication).
Unfortunately, a lot of discourse blurs that distinction. Having the right to internet access doesn't mean that you should receive state-subsidized internet access; not any more than the right to free expression guarantees you a state-subsidized printing press, nor the right to keep and bear arms guarantees you a state-subsidized rifle.
Having a right to a thing means that your pursuit and enjoyment of that thing shall not be artificially hindered or suppressed; it's still up to you to obtain and make use of the object of that right by your own endeavors.
I would gladly sign a document that had an exhaustive and exclusive list of declarations of what we weren't going to allow governments to do. We implicitly give governments the rights to the use of force, and governments, like people (to whom we don't give such rights) will, in time, see any lack of interdiction as an implicit approval.
And positive rights, such as declaring that “all shall be provided, gratis, access to the internet”, have an implicit coercion in them; someone must be forced to provide it.
> I would gladly sign a document that had an exhaustive and exclusive list of declarations of what we weren't going to allow governments to do.
We've got one of those already. It doesn't work as well as it was intended to, because, despite the idealistic "rule of law, not men" rhetoric, laws are just abstract concepts, and the world is always under the control of people, who will game and manipulate any system of rules to their advantage. If you build an institution and give it enough power, the people who run it will eventually find a way around their constraints.
Appreciate the skepticism here, but this seems like an exceptionally well worded pledge. Right now, it's the usual suspects (including Y Combinator and a number of other important advocates for a better internet) that have signed on, but it's early and hopefully this will become more main-stream.
An ideal outcome would probably require this to become a political lobbying tool, similar to Grover Norquist's Americans for Tax Reform "Taxpayer Protection Pledge". It's nearly impossible to win a Republican election these days unless you sign-on: 96% of all Republicans in Congress have signed the pledge to never increase taxes[0].
To address a few detractors in this thread, please don't be confused when the word "free" is used. It's in reference to freedom, not cost. However, cost is specifically addressed:
Access:
Promote universal access to fast and affordable networks.
One of the things I like about this declaration compared to other similar ones (Declaration of Independence, UDHR, Stallman) is that it makes no mention of intrinsic rights. It clearly states its objectives as goals to work towards, rather attempting to frame an imaginary natural law by which these conditions already automagically apply to the human animal.
That said, it seems to me that there is a potential conflict between #3 (Openness) and #4 (Innovation). It is the same as the conflict between capitalism and democratic socialism: if you don't allow people a certain amount of economic tyranny in exchange for their work, the work won't happen, and civilization atrophies.
This is intuitive with physical goods: people won't make shoes if someone can just take them, so we back up the concept of ownership with state violence, and that allows people to make a living cobbling. The same phenomenon happens in computing, be it through copyright, vendor lock-in, or walled gardens, and this is always going to create an incentive to block #3 (or, the lack of such incentive will inhibit #4).
While I believe copyright/patent reform is deeply necessary, including the consideration that they might stymie more innovation than they create, this zero-sum conflict should be at the heart of it, and should be kept in mind when pursuing lofty goals of digital justice.
Don't see the same conflict in this declaration. Assuming that you interpret #3 (Openness) as a call to not enforce property rights, but I don't see it that way.
#3 is somewhat vague, but this principle seems most closely aligned with traditional net neutrality principles. Perhaps they felt that the phrase "net neutrality" was too prescriptive, and I agree. Markets with sufficient competition have no need for net neutrality regulations, unfortunately, broadband competition in the U.S. is severely lacking.
I'm thinking of ecosystems rather than products; app stores vs. web, etc. It's easy to vilify rent-seeking behavior that drives closed systems, but without that lure, fewer platforms get built, and progress slows down. It's the kind of thing that Charlie Stross calls a Wicked Problem.
Admittedly, this all depends on one's interpretation of "Openness".
This kind of effort might have been more credible from the beginning if the initial text were simultaneously composed in both Chinese and English. China leads the world in restricting the freedom of the Internet, and shows other countries by example how to do that. I MIGHT sign a thoughtfully composed statement about Internet freedom written in Chinese (which I would be able to read in Chinese), but yet another precatory statement in English mostly for the English-speaking world really doesn't motivate me to action, because it doesn't address the toughest set of problems.
AFTER EDIT: Seriously, if you want to campaign for better openness and freedom on the Internet, the people to get advice from on how to write your declaration are people who are attempting to use the Internet to circumvent regimes that have never had free and fair elections and that have never tolerated a free press.
We can't keep ignoring politics or we'll end up with laws so invasive that not even hardware and software can overcome them. And more importantly we can't let them gain any legislative precedence. It's much easier to fight now than in five years.
And further more I don't see how we have any advantages in the realms of hardware were we would afford to fight.
Someone called the Pirate Party movements "political selfdefence", and I reckon that's just what it is.
Just fighting from the outside is exhaustive, we can't have big protests every week and the attacks keep coming.
Normally I would agree with you, but the pace at which computers and the internet improves is now so high, and congress is so gridlocked that I do believe that we have left them behind, permantly.
I wouldn't fight for any other, with the possible exception of Germany, Spain or Austria.
France is too egocentrical, Britain (as much as I love the country) has a government hell-bent on recreating 1984, the Scandinavian countries are dying a slow death of too many paper-pushers and most of Eastern-Europe cannot rightly be called developed.
But none of that matters as realistically the US is the only country powerful enough to cause sufficient damaged to be worth worring about.
I should note that I am not American and so this is not a matter of nationalism.
"France is too egocentrical, Britain (as much as I love the country) has a government hell-bent on recreating 1984, the Scandinavian countries are dying a slow death of too many paper-pushers and most of Eastern-Europe cannot rightly be called developed."
Ignoring for the moment that much of that sounds overly cynical and is definitely an overgeneralisation, which part of 'fight' did you miss? The very reason we're fighting is to do away with many of these problems and improve the situation! For some reason, you think this applies to the USA and a few other countries, but when it comes to other countries, what you say comes down to "Now, listen, I really want to solve these problems. Really, I do. But listen, you guys have problems, so now I can't help you." How does that make sense?
"But none of that matters as realistically the US is the only country powerful enough to cause sufficient damaged to be worth worring about."
I think you would be surprised. The USA is still only one country. It's a very powerful one, of course, I'm glad we agree on that part. But you can't focus on one country to the exclusion of almost everything else. (Well, you can, but that would not be very smart.)
Also, you forgot the Benelux, but I suspect you would also consider these countries too small to be considered.
Saying that this isn't a political challenge would be like ignoring the language that a framework is built in. Technology is a framework built on top of our society, made possible by the rules and laws (or lack thereof) of our society. It is a political challenge, because we're discussing the foundation on which the rules of our society operate.
The realm of politics is engaging in technology, so it's up to us whether or not this is a one way street or a two way street.
However, I caution anyone who advocates a one way street (the government regulating technology and technology ignoring government) -- they're going to get it wrong (either intentionally due to lobbying from competition or just incompetence), and it's going to materially affect your business.
Although the points are a bit vague and overlapping, I don't see how questions of censorship, openness, and privacy are inherently and exclusively technological. Yes, there are technological methods that can enhance our ability to rout around obstructions in each of these areas, but addressing social problems via technology is a lot more reliable and effective than attempting to address technical problems via politics.
We do need code and infrastructure to support freedom even (and especially) when it is threatened, but the preservation of freedom in a social context isn't a merely technological endeavor.
In some ways, yes this is technological. Access to the internet is a technological problem. In other ways it is political. SOPA is an example of something writing more code would not solve (well legally at least). That is because it is telling us what we can and cannot write. As nerds, we tend to just want to skirt the political aspects of the internet. Unfortunately its become larger than ourselves. Its time to accept the world for what it is, and fight to keep our place we've built.
Along those lines, I'd expect a declaration of freedom to go like "We're free, and we're going to do the following things" rather than "Hey, people with actual power, please respect our freedom in the following ways."
I truly doubt this challenge can only be won by technology. There will always be physical parts on the technology that can be controlled by those in power, by force if needed.
I think it's both. Yes, the Internet's more technical people will always be ahead of whatever the Government is proposing and enforcing. The masses won't be except for a short while at most. This is why you need to treat this as a political issue, too, otherwise you'll have your technical issues of escaping Government oppression of the Internet, but you'll always be persecuted.
Free needs to be defined more. Obviously there are costs associated with maintaining the Internet; it can't be free. Also, open needs to be defined more. You can't be fully open and have privacy as well: privacy is a form of censorship. Also, this is one sided, and doesn't take into consideration the ISP's position as well. Too vague to mean anything.
This declaration lacks both of these important bits of information. We have a list of imperative bullet points - do this, don't do that - but no elaboration as to why these are desirable, to whom they're desirable, and who is expected to act on the imperative instructions.
At best, it's a set of vague, aspirational intentions; at worst, it distracts us away from developing practical strategies for actually protecting internet freedom.