
Support an Open Internet, create your own freedom.txt - zeppelin_7
http://www.isingh.info/blog/2012/01/22/support-an-open-internet-create-your-own-freedom-txt/
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acabal
Sorry but this is just more Facebook-style slacktivism, but worse because it's
not even easily discoverable by mere mortals.

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akkartik
Maybe make it more useful by providing a set of DNS lookups for major sites?
Since SOPA tries to compromise DNS it would be useful to evolve a
decentralized variant.

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overshard
This is nice and all but I don't think anyone is going to go to websites and
type /freedom.txt to see if it has it. It's much like the humans.txt file. No
one actually reads these things.

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bigiain
Maybe we should all resolve to do exactly that every now and then. Competent
website owners will soon notice a spike in 404s looking for it...

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skrebbel
I wrote the contents of freedom.txt on a piece of paper and put it in my
drawer. That'll teach those Hollywood bastards!!

~~~
avallark
bravo campion!

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lukifer
I love the idea, but the writing leaves something to be desired; swipes at
governments and corporations distract from the message. I think short and
sweet is the way to go:

"My name is ____ and I own this website. I staunchly oppose any interference
with the internet's ability to connect people and share knowledge. The power
to silence this website or any other violates a fundamental human right to
free speech, and I vigorously oppose any such action, law, or policy."

On the surface, I admit this seems like an empty gesture. If it catches on,
though, it could carry a few advantages: free speech advocates can cite how
many domains oppose a given bill, and we can start pushing politicians and
corporations to put this on their own sites to publicly display their
commitment.

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furyofantares
> An open internet is more important than security, copyright infringement,
> terrorism or child pornography.

I'm not sure this sentence does what you want it to do. It implies these
things are all a similar level of evil, and it makes it easy for any reader to
dismiss the entire text.

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markesmith
Tim Berners-Lee and the W3C would disagree:
<http://www.w3.org/2001/tag/issues.html#siteData-36>

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ortatherox
Couldn't this be worked into the /w3c/p3p file instead as defined by the W3C
in that doc?

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cek
Why is "Anonymous" capitalized in the text?

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zeppelin_7
Added a small landing page. Please do let me know if you have additional
content that you want me to put up. <http://wastedcode.com/freedom/>

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MarkTraceur
How can you in one post extoll a free/open internet, and after it post links
to nonfree sites like Twitter, Facebook, and Google+? Start walking the walk.

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mvanveen
I have a git repo up here: <https://github.com/mvanveen/freedom.txt>

Included is a Python script which automatically generates a freedom.txt file.

Please feel free to send pull requests. Add a separate line on locations.txt
with your freedom.txt address and the script will automatically output it!

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joelrunyon
I'm suspecting that anyone that knows where to look this up is already on our
side.

The challenge isn't _recruiting_ more techies on our side, the challenge is
_organizing_ said techies and recruiting & educating *non-techies.

I hope you don't take this the wrong way, but I just feel that sometimes we're
misguiding our efforts.

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c1sc0
hey zeppelin, thx for submitting this and giving it a little more attention. &
cool to own up : <http://www.isingh.info/freedom.txt>

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zeppelin_7
Its a super cool move! Totally support you!

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avallark
"Hi, my name is XXX XXX and I own this website. I no longer wish to stay
Anonymous"

are you a part of Anonymous? :))

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benwerd
Surely on a free and open Internet you wouldn't have to declare your real name
to show support?

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zeppelin_7
Open internet is about choice. You can choose to declare your name, or not,
like today. You can put your name in freedom.txt or not. But if its not an
open internet, perhaps you will be forced to.

