Reddit Writes A Law: First Draft Of The Free Internet Act Emerges

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1nei0Q_-th2J0fkqZU0hyBrSKklQqoc-8eXpXEwoLDwE/edit?pli=1

by esalazar • 14 years ago

77 25 14 years ago

docs.google.com

jchimney• 14 years ago

proud of you.. you cat, bacon, narwhal loving bunch of weirdos

kijin2• 14 years ago

Neat idea, but the current version of the document just looks like a jumble of loosely related points, somewhat like the laundry list of demands that somebody claiming to represent OWS posted on Reddit a few months ago. What does a damage cap on copyright infringement have to do with a general prohibition of censorship? Why does the document suddenly make up an arbitrary definition of derivative content? Closely related items should be placed together, but different topics should be grouped separately.

I'm also a bit skeptical about the way the document so quickly excludes "illegal data" from its purview. So much of the surveillance and censorship measures that people are worried about take place in the name of preventing and/or prosecuting illegal activity. Therefore, the scope of "illegal" must be very carefully defined in order to prevent gaping loopholes. Is downloading child porn "illegal" in the same way that uploading a copyrighted song is "illegal"? At the very least, cases involving damage claims in a civil suit should be distinguished from cases involving criminal prosecution.

Also, basing damages on the retail price of copyrighted works, multiplied by the number of copies produced, seems odd to me. If you upload 0.8% of a copyrighted file to 100 people over BitTorrent, how many copies have you produced? 0.8 copies? What if the infringed work is not on sale in the first place? What happens if you violate an open-source software license?

But I don't hang out on Reddit all that much, so maybe these apparent shortcomings have good reasons behind them?

JumpCrisscross3• 14 years ago

It's ironic that the effect of special interests, pork, and other forms of Congressional "trolling" writing a bill in Google Docs seeks to mock come home to roost regardless.

AdleyEskridge• 14 years ago

> Censorship is only permitted if content is found to be illegal content in accordance with this treaty.

> All false information stored to misguide, scam, cause damage, trap users financially, or mutilate collateral are illegal content.

The italicized text concerns me. Not because there's anything wrong with it, but because I can easily imagine an unscrupulous politician claiming (for instance) that arguments critical of government economic policy are "false" and are intended to "misguide" and "cause damage" to the economy and well-being of the nation.

The Constitution of the United States has been rendered effectively worthless by this very tactic—a couple of its clauses are routinely used to justify anything, because of their less-than-specific wording.

I suspect documents like this are a symptom of the cure rather than the cure itself. They can only be enacted—and can only continue to serve their purpose—as long as the citizens and their politicians support the documents' causes.

vy8vWJlco2• 14 years ago

It looks like it's becoming a "status quo" document because, for the sake of credibility, noone wants to stand up on copyright, privacy, censorship, and human rights. The "what if someone posts illegal content!?" questions dominate, just like in the Reddit meshnet plan.

We've been having this debate about the Internet for years and decades later, we're still not willing to stand up for the bad speech to save the good speech. (You can't have one without the other -- that's what that amendment was about.)

Yes I think it's that black or white.... Iran has shown us it IS possible to go back to the stone age, and the scary part is, the US and Canada BOTH have a 1984 bill in play as I write.

We've come a long way in terms of technology, but people are less willing to stand up for the free flow of information than ever. We are crawling back into Plato's cave.

As difficult as some information can be (and it's strictly that -- information -- bits -- not murder, or rape, or worse; not a physical act but merely the vapors of physical acts), I think I'd rather have the truth and an open sky than the comfort of a lie.

I'm more afraid of a world without Wikileaks than one with Wikileaks.

eurleif• 14 years ago

>the US and Canada BOTH have a 1984 bill in play as I write

What bills are you referring to, specifically?

kijin2• 14 years ago

Completely agreed. The italicized clause actually expands the scope of illegal data compared to what it currently is in the USA. Besides, I'm not even sure if content can ever be illegal, only the act of producing and distributing certain kinds of content with certain kinds of intent. If you say "illegal content", you're most likely buying into the rhetoric of censorship advocates.

weaksauce• 14 years ago

This is why we can't have nice things; the message is getting overwritten every few seconds by a kids pasting in goatse and jailbait references. wisdom of the collective is neither when one party is overpowering.

mikegirouard• 14 years ago

Ok, I can't keep track of the chaos. I made this if its useful to anyone. You know what to do. https://github.com/mgirouard/free-internet-act

bherms2• 14 years ago

you beat me to it!

bherms2• 14 years ago

Looks like the vandals have taken their toll... Instead of open google doc, this should be a git repo.

edit: Created one: https://github.com/bradherman/Reddit-Free-Internet-Act

kartoffelmos• 14 years ago

While I at first agreed that this should be a Git repo, it could in the end defeat the document's purpose. This document is meant to be seen and governed by everyone, not only those who know how to use Git.

btown• 14 years ago

FYI, GitHub now allows you to fork, edit, and make a pull request all from its online interface, without ever cloning on your computer. Each save is a commit, and submissions are pull requests. The feature hasn't been publicized widely, and there isn't real documentation for lay-people, but all the functionality is there.

marcamillion• 14 years ago

Very interesting that Reddit could really be emerging as a force for good on the internet...not just a bunch of time-wasting, cry babies. Don't mean to be harsh, but while there is some good stuff, there is a lot of just time-burning stuff.

That being said, if they are able to marshal the productive collective and produce actual legislation that can work - that would be very interesting.

I wonder if legislation ever written by 'non-legislators' has ever been passed into law.

Is that even legal?

trotsky• 14 years ago

Between lobbyists, interest groups, the executive branch, staff attorneys, various agencies and congressional staff I doubt even a significant minority of law is written by actual legislators.

iotasquared• 14 years ago

Full text: http://pastebin.com/7VY4VTLn

adulau• 14 years ago

I have a preference for "A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace" written by John Perry Barlow in 1996:

https://projects.eff.org/~barlow/Declaration-Final.html

It's more inspirational and make it more universal. Just like the "The Universal Declaration of Human Rights"...

wisty• 14 years ago

Here's a question - is there any piece of Javascript you would wack into a html page which would allow users to query the contact details of their representatives? It would be good if this was as international as possible (though in some countries it would be impossibl).

twelvechairs2• 14 years ago

Why do they want to write this sort of stuff in stuffy 19-th century pseudo-legalese?

Cant they just have a plain speech normal copy and let this be translated into proper referenced legal documents (for various jurisdictions) by people who know what they are doing?

JumpCrisscross3• 14 years ago

'Legalese' isn't just obfuscated English. It's very precise English designed to smoothly interface with the entire corpus of law. Since Redditors were trying to draft a bill it seems appropriate.

twelvechairs2• 14 years ago

Looking at the various Reddit pages, I assumed this was not just for the USA. Words have different legal meanings in different legal environments.

Having said that, some of the contributors (and yourself assumedly) seem to feel the opposite.

georgieporgie• 14 years ago

Contracts and laws can be written in simple language, despite what some may claim. However, doing so will require them to be longer.

shingen• 14 years ago

It's a nice thought, but the only thing you'll get from large scale group editing & group think is mediocrity, endless confusion and endless debate.

There has never been an amazing piece of 'legislation' drafted by a huge group of people. There's a very good reason why that's the case. Intelligent discourse in which critical differences and conflicts can be sorted out, can't occur at hyper scale because it becomes an echo chamber - all you'll end up hearing is everybody shouting back and forth, resulting in absolutely nothing.

The only way they can do this, if they're serious about it, is through using a representation system, in which a group of people empowers one person to speak, negotiate and resolve on their behalf so that things actually get done.

Reddit Writes A Law: First Draft Of The Free Internet Act Emerges

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