

Reddit Writes A Law: First Draft Of The Free Internet Act Emerges - esalazar
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1nei0Q_-th2J0fkqZU0hyBrSKklQqoc-8eXpXEwoLDwE/edit?pli=1

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bherms
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>

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kartoffelmos
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.

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btown
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.

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AdleyEskridge
> 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.

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vy8vWJlco
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.

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

What bills are you referring to, specifically?

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vy8vWJlco
US: HR.1981 Canada: Bill C-30

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adulau
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"...

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twelvechairs
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?

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JumpCrisscross
'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.

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twelvechairs
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.

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JumpCrisscross
Oh - I assumed it was. A draft bill for no house of law is sort of pointless.

More effective may have been a memo for legislators defining the minimum
requirements for a country to have "Internet freedom".

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mikegirouard
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>

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bherms
you beat me to it!

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marcamillion
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?

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trotsky
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.

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wisty
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).

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kijin
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?

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JumpCrisscross
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.

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iotasquared
Full text: <http://pastebin.com/7VY4VTLn>

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weaksauce
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.

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

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shingen
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.

