Come Join Our Fireside Chat With Rep. Zoe Lofgren To Discuss Internet Regulations: From SOPA To Now... And Looking Forward

from the don't-miss-it dept

As you've probably seen, for the last couple of weeks we've been running our Techdirt Greenhouse series of posts looking back on the fight against SOPA from those who were there at the time, including one this morning from from Rep. Zoe Lofgren, who was a key player in Congress stopping SOPA. Tomorrow at 1pm PT / 4pm ET, we'll be having Rep. Lofgren join us for a "fireside chat" looking back at what happened with SOPA a decade ago, but more importantly looking at what's happening today with internet regulations and where things are likely to go. If you want to attend live, please register to sign up. Like many of our recent events, we're using the Remo platform, which has the feeling of an actual in-person event, even while it's virtual. You'll be able to talk to other people at your "table" as well as move around to other tables to talk to other attendees as well. During the talk with Lofgren, you'll be able to submit your own questions as well. So please join us tomorrow...

Filed Under: competition, copyright, internet policy, privacy, section 230, sopa, zoe lofgren

Blumenthal's Finsta Debacle: It Remains Unacceptable That Our Politicians Are So Clueless About The Internet

from the this-is-just-embarrassing dept

Fifteen years ago, the best example of how out of touch elected officials were regarding the internet was Senator Ted Stevens' infamous "it's a series of tubes" speech (which started out "I just the other day got, an internet was sent by my staff at 10 o'clock in the morning on Friday and I just got it yesterday.") Over the years, this unwillingness of those who put themselves in the position to regulate the internet to actually bother to understand it has become something of an unfortunate running joke. A decade ago, in the midst of the fight over SOPA/PIPA, we pointed out that it's no longer okay for Congress to not know how the internet works. And yet, a decade has passed and things have not gotten much better. Senator Ron Johnson tried to compare the internet to a bridge into a small creek. Senator Orrin Hatch has no clue how Facebook makes money.

And now there's a new addition to the list of examples of totally clueless Senators seeking to regulate something they clearly don't understand. This time it's Senator Richard Blumenthal, who has been grandstanding about how he wants to take on the internet since long before he was elected to the Senate. He created the most cringe-worthy media clip of a politician in a while while trying to press Facebook's head of safety Antigone Davis during a Senate hearing on "grandstanding about how we all hate Facebook" (not the actual subject matter, but close enough).

I heard about the exchange before I saw it, but watching the whole thing is even worse than just hearing that Blumenthal seemed to think "finsta" is a Facebook "product or service." If you're somehow as ignorant as Blumenthal, "finsta" is just a slang term for a "fake" Instagram account, where someone doesn't want to be posting under their real name. This can be used to have a more focused conversation, to discuss things you don't want to discuss under your real name, to hide from some people, or for plenty of other reasons. But Blumenthal seemed to think this "product or service" was bad and Facebook should stop it.

Blumenthal (giving his stern politician face): Will you commit to ending Finsta.

Davis (long pause and a very confused look): Senator, let me again explain... we don't actually "do" finsta. What "finsta" refers to is young people setting up accounts where they want to have more privacy. You refer to it as having privacy from their parents, but in my interaction with teens, what I found is they sometimes they like to have an account where they can interact just with a smaller group of friends...

This is a nice diplomatic response to a monumentally confused question. Some people might take that answer and realize that maybe they didn't quite understand what they were asking. But not Senator Blumenthal. Senator Blumenthal doubled down, interrupting Davis:

Blumenthal: Finsta is one of your products or services! [smug face] We're not talking about Google or Apple. It's Facebook! Correct?

Davis (another long pause and another very confused look): F-F-Finsta is slang for a type of account. It's not...

Blumenthal (interrupting again): Okay, will you end that type of account?

I mean, what? How the hell does Blumenthal think that Facebook can magically make people's alias accounts go away? Hell, earlier in the very same hearing... Blumenthal more or less admitted that he had created a finsta account for himself to examine Instagram's friend recommendation engine. And, obviously, there are plenty of good questions to be asked about the recommendation engine and how it works and what it promotes. But the "will you end alias accounts" line of questioning is just bizarrely disconnected from reality.

Even if we were to give Blumenthal the benefit of the doubt, and believe he is honestly concerned that people are able to sign up for accounts under non-real names, that also suggests a serious misunderstanding of a bunch of things about the internet. Facebook actually has long had a "real names" policy, and academic research going back a decade has shown just how damaging that is, especially for marginalized groups and those at risk for various reasons. Forcing everyone to use their real names damages privacy, can lead to stalking, can harm those who wish to explore more controversial topics, and a variety of other things. Automatically assuming that forcing everyone to have a profile under their real name is the best solution is its own kind of ignorance regarding the internet and internet culture. EFF's Jillian York rightly refers to this demand as "the White Man's Gambit," in that it is most often suggested as a solution by white men who don't realize how their privileged position blinds to them to the many, many reasons why people might want to use a "finsta" account for their own privacy and safety.

And this is obviously not the first time Blumenthal has made it clear that he has no interest in understanding the ins-and-outs or details of the internet he so desperately wants to regulate. He was the lead Democratic sponsor of FOSTA and took glee in the idea that the law might cause small internet companies to go out of business. He's also behind the EARN IT Act, which would be a disaster for the internet and encryption, but has hilariously also gotten mad that Zoom's encryption wasn't fully end-to-end even though his own bill would undermine the ability of anyone to offer end-to-end encryption.

So, no, Senator Blumenthal does not get the benefit of the doubt regarding his knowledge of the internet. He has a long history of being confused about how it all works and the impacts of his policy proposals. And maybe, just maybe, before rushing in to sternly judge these internet companies, he could take the time to learn what a "finsta" is.

Filed Under: antigone davis, congress, finsta, ignorance, internet policy, real names, richard blumenthal
Companies: facebook, instagram

China's Game Controllers Ignore Emergent Order

from the emergent-order-is-important dept

Last week, China restricted children under 18 to three weekend hours of video games per week. If you’re a parent of a Minecraft- or Fortnite-obsessed child, you may be wondering why the U.S. doesn’t do something similar. But China’s move against juvenile gaming is just the Chinese government's latest salvo in their barrage of attempts to control internet technology. Their centralized approach is one that we in the U.S. have historically rejected and should continue to reject.

China’s Great Firewall has long cut off the Chinese people’s access to much of the global internet. But recent actions in China focus on its own tech companies. These moves include passing a stringent new privacy law (which offers no protection from government spying) and tough new antitrust restrictions. China also blocked internet finance company Ant’s I.P.O., fined e-commerce company Alibaba 18.2 billion yuan and has heavily regulated online lenders, rapidly reducing their numbers from 5,000 to six as of September 2020. One prominent financial tycoon was abducted in Hong Kong, taken to China, and is apparently under house arrest while Chinese regulators seize and dismantle his companies. The crackdown expands beyond tech companies to users – Chinese police have arrested social media stars for on-camera eating as part of a campaign against food waste. It is, according to commentary circulated by Chinese state media, a “profound revolution” against “the chaos of big capital” and “a return to the Communist Party of China’s initial aspirations, a return to people as the center, and a return to the essence of socialism.”

In short, China’s leaders are grasping to centralize control. And their method is to label individualism as a vice rather than a virtue.

China’s leaders fear that they are losing control of markets and society, especially in the digital age.

They are right. But as I argue in my forthcoming book, Getting Out of Control: Emergent Leadership in a Complex World, control is overrated – and often it is counterproductive. Complex systems like markets are characterized by emergent order, with robust and productive patterns forming from the interactions of many individual participants following relatively simple rules. These patterns cannot be anticipated or centrally designed, because the knowledge they embody is produced by the individuals grappling with the situations in front of them.

Attempts to centrally control such systems eliminate much of the nuance and knowledge contained within them. The result is a simplistic, centralized system that leaves most participants worse off than they were under the emergent order produced by the complex, decentralized system. Unsurprisingly, those who are better off under centralized systems tend to be those at the center – those in control. Their control comes at the expense of everyone else’s welfare.

I don’t expect this argument to persuade China’s leaders to change their path, although for their citizens’ sake I wish they would. But it might help guide our path here in the U.S. The U.S. character – and our Constitution - would never permit the kind of full-bore government centralization that China has undertaken. Yet the technocratic desire to be in control, especially in times of rapid change, is alive and well here. 

Indeed, many of the ideas China has adopted are floating around U.S. academia and even Capitol Hill. Breaking up big tech, regulating new technologies like blockchain and cryptocurrencies, regulating what kind of speech cannot or must be allowed on social media sites, limiting the use of encryption – these are increasingly common sentiments across the U.S. political spectrum. Sen. Josh Hawley’s proposed bill to ban “infinite scroll” on phone apps would fit in seamlessly with the Chinese government's diktats.

It's as if China is taking the most precautionary policies from US academics, advocates, and lawmakers and implementing them via boot, truncheon, and machine gun. In fact, China’s commercial privacy law – created by a government that surveilles its citizens relentlessly – has drawn praise from some U.S. tech policy leaders who seem to wish we in the U.S. could ram through such onerous laws without the inconveniences of the democratic process.

But America’s strengths include our embrace of individualism, couched appropriately within functioning institutions (themselves artifacts of emergent order), and our willingness to participate in complex systems where no one seems to be in control. These strengths have made the U.S. an economic powerhouse, home to many great innovators in technology and businesses, and the source of creative expression that entertains and educates the world.

As tech analyst Ben Thompson has argued, let’s not do a pale imitation of China's attempt to stamp out individualism and centralize control. Instead, let's double down on freeing the individual to create solutions to the problems they and others face.

Even if that means you, not the government, has to tell your kid to put down the game controller.

Neil Chilson is a senior technology and innovation research fellow at Stand Together and former Chief Technologist at the Federal Trade Commission. His new book, "Getting Out of Control: Emergent Leadership in a Complex World," will be released on September 23.

Filed Under: china, emergent order, internet policy, tech policy, top down, video games

It's Time To Regulate The Internet... But Thoughtfully

from the easier-said-than-done dept

The internet policy world is headed for change, and the change that’s coming isn’t just a matter of more regulations but, rather, involves an evolution in how we think about communications technologies. The most successful businesses operating at what we have, up until now, called the internet’s “edge” are going to be treated like infrastructure more and more. What’s ahead is not exactly the “break them up” plan of the 2019 Presidential campaign of Senator Warren, but something a bit different. It’s a positive vision of government intervention to generate an evolution in our communications infrastructure to ensure a level playing field for competition; meaningful choices for end users; and responsibility, transparency, and accountability for the companies that provide economically and socially valuable platforms and services.

We’ve seen evolutions in our communications infrastructure a few times before: first, when the telephone network became infrastructure for the internet protocol stack; again when the internet protocol stack became infrastructure for the World Wide Web; and then again when the Web became infrastructure on which key “edge” services like search and social media were built. Now, these edge services themselves are becoming infrastructure. And as a consequence, they will increasingly be regulated.

Throughout its history, the “edge” of the internet sector has - for the most part - always enjoyed a light regulatory yoke, particularly in the United States. Many treated the lack of oversight as a matter of design, or even as necessarily inherent, given the differences between the timetables and processes of technology innovation and legislation. From John Perry Barlow’s infamous “Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace” to Frank Easterbrook’s “Cyberspace and the Law of the Horse” to Larry Lessig’s “Code is law,” an entire generation of thinkers were inculcated in the belief that the internet was too complex to regulate directly (or too critical, too fragile, or, well, too “something”).

We didn’t need regulatory change to catalyze the prior iterations of the internet’s evolution. The phone network was already regulated as a common carrier service, creating ample opportunity for edge innovation. And the IP stack and the Web were built as fully open standards, structurally designed to prevent the emergence of vertical monopolies and gatekeeping behavior. In contrast, from the get-go, today’s “edge” services have been dominated by private sector companies, a formula that has arguably helped contribute to their steady innovation and growth. At the same time, limited government intervention results in limited opportunity to address the diverse harms facing internet users and competing businesses.

As the cover of the November 17, 2019 New York Times magazine so well illustrated the internet of today is no utopia. I won’t try to summarize the challenges, but I’ll direct anyone interested in unpacking them to my former employer Mozilla’s Internet Health Report as a starting point. We are due for another evolution of the internet, but in contrast to prior iterations, the market isn't set up for change on its own - we need government action to force the issue.

I’m not alone in observing that the internet regulatory tide has turned. Governments are no longer bystanders. We are witnessing an inexorable rise in intervention. This is scary to many people: private companies operating in the sector worried about new costs and changes, academics and think tanks who celebrate the anti-regulatory approach we’ve had thus far, and human rights advocates concerned about future risks to speech and other freedoms. The internet has been an incredible socioeconomic engine, and continuing the benefits it brings requires preserving its fundamental good characteristics.

While new laws are not without risk of harm, further regulatory change today seems both necessary and inevitable. The open question is whether the effect will be, on balance, good or bad. If these imminent changes are done well, the power of government oversight will be harnessed to increase accountability and meaningful transparency, promote openness and interoperability, and center the future on user agency and empowerment to help make markets work to their fullest. If on the other hand these changes are done poorly, we risk, among other undesirable outcomes, reinforcing the status quo of centralized power, barriers to entry and growth, and business models that don’t empower users but instead subject them to ever-worsening garbage.

I’m an optimist; I think we’re on a course to make the internet better through good government intervention. From my perspective, we can already see the framework of the future comprehensive internet regulation that is to come, for better or for worse. Think of it as the Internet Communications Act of 2024, to use a U.S. naming convention; or the General Internet Sector Regulation, following the E.U. style. Advocates for a better internet can either sit on the sidelines as these developments continue, decrying the (legitimate) risks and concerns; or they can get into the mix, put forward some good ideas, and build strategies and coalitions to help shape the outcome so that it best serves the public’s interest.

Where are the key policy fights taking place? Geographically, over the past few years, we’ve seen the center of internet policy shift from Washington D.C. to Brussels, and that’s where we can see the future emerging most clearly today. The GDPR illustrates this shift, as despite its imperfections, it established a new paradigm for data protection that has been echoed in Kenya and California, with more to come.

This isn’t just a story about Europe, or about privacy, though. Competition reform is racing forward with major investigations and reports around the world; the United Kingdom has done perhaps the most work here, with its eye-opening Final Report of July 2020 (all 437 pages and 27 appendices of it!). Many countries are undertaking antitrust investigations of specific companies or reevaluating the modern day fitness of their competition legal frameworks.

Meanwhile social media companies and, more broadly, internet companies as intermediaries for user communications online, have come under fire all around the world, with Pakistan and India making some of the most aggressive moves so far. The European Union is advancing its own comprehensive regulatory vision for online content through the Digital Services Act, just as the United States is reevaluating its historical intermediary liability safe harbor, Section 230.

In the United States, we’re seeing a moment that bears many similarities to the late 1960s in the buildup to the Clean Air Act of 1970. That law had powerful bipartisan support, and commensurate industry opposition. Just as with those early climate political wars, advocates for reform are facing the weaponization of uncertainty as a tactic to resist government intervention, with the abuse of data and science and metrics to advocate for an outcome of inaction. As with climate change, inaction to address the harms presented by the internet ecosystem today is itself is a policy choice, and it’s the wrong one for the future health of the internet. I believe change will come though, and as with the Clean Air Act, eventually we'll look back and appreciate the sea change we made by intervening at a critical moment. (Sorry, that pun was mostly inadvertent - and, in fact, a bit unfortunate given the current state of play of climate politics and the climate crisis… but that’s a piece for another author, another day.)

Considering that the Clean Air Act established the Environmental Protection Agency, perhaps in the U.S. we need what Harold Feld and his colleagues at Public Knowledge have been calling for in the Digital Platform Act, establishing something akin to an Internet Protection Agency. Or perhaps, as I’ve supported in the past, we need a revamped Federal Trade Commission with greater authority, building on that agency’s success at integrating technologists into its consumer protection work. Increasingly, I’m inclined towards the idea that what we need is an expanded Federal Communications Commission, given that agency’s relatively broad authority (no matter how circumscribed by the current leadership) and the nature of this evolution as advancing what feels like modern day communications infrastructure. The United Kingdom has decided to go in this direction for content regulation, for example, appointing OFCOM to manage future “duty of care” obligations for online platforms. The technologies and businesses are very different between the traditional telecom sector and the internet ecosystem, though, and substantial evolution of the regulatory model would be necessary.

Regardless of where you situate the future policy making and enforcement function within the U.S. government, we’re still at the normative development stage on these policy issues. And frankly, the internet policy world needs some new ideas for what comes next. So, over the next few posts in this series, I’m going to share a few fresh thoughts that I’ve been mulling over. Stay tuned!

Filed Under: internet policy, internet regulations, tech policy

If You Want To Know How Supporting Techdirt Can Help Shift The Debate In Washington DC, Read This

from the and-then-donate dept

The following is from Jen Hoelzer, who for years worked as Senator Ron Wyden's Communications Director and Deputy Chief of Staff. During the SOPA/PIPA fight, she was perhaps the key person in Congress getting the press (and others in Congress) to understand the importance of SOPA and PIPA and what it meant for the internet. This morning, completely out of the blue, she sent this over. I think it does an amazing job highlighting just how important independent coverage of important tech policy issues, like what we provide, can be on these debates. Plenty of cynical people said that the SOPA/PIPA fight couldn't be won. Those same people are saying that the net neutrality battle is already lost. Good, independent reporting on these issues does make a difference, which is why we're asking you to support us in our net neutrality coverage.

Click here to support our crowdfunding campaign »

Hi. My name is Jen... and I was once a Congressional staffer who knew so little about Internet policy that I had no idea how little I knew about Internet policy. (I think this is where you're supposed to supportively say, "Hi, Jen," and reassure me that this is a safe space for me to continue my embarrassing confession. Because it gets worse.)

In late 2010, when my former boss -- U.S. Senator Ron Wyden -- announced that he was putting a hold on the Combating Online Infringement and Counterfeits Act (COICA) – the predecessor to PIPA and later, SOPA -- I not only didn't know how the DNS system worked, I'm not sure I knew what infringement meant. (I'm not proud of these things, but they're true.)

If my boss hadn't involved himself in this issue, odds are I would never have heard of it and, heck, if by some chance I had learned that the Judiciary Committee had unanimously passed legislation giving law enforcement (what their press release called) "important tools" to go after illegal activity, I probably wouldn't have given the issue any thought beyond thinking it was nice that Democrats and Republicans remembered how to work together.

Worse yet, when my chief of staff stopped by my office to let me know that the Senator would be placing a hold on the legislation, I didn't drop what I was doing to alert reporters or ask one of my deputies to pound out a press release. I'm not sure I even looked up from my computer.

Honestly, it didn't occur to me that anyone would consider what my boss did that afternoon news, until I got a Google News Alert that a blog called, Techdirt, had written about it.

Now, in my defense, the above does not mean that I was lazy or willfully ignorant. From the outside, I realize Congress doesn't appear to do anything, but there are so many bills and issues swirling around Capitol Hill at any one time that it's a challenge just to stay on top of the sliver of them that pertains to your job. On an average day, Senator Wyden could go from a breakfast forum on health reform, to a committee hearing on tax reform, to introducing legislation on renewable energy, to questioning the forest service on resources for firefighting, before giving a floor speech on NSA surveillance, and that would just be before noon. So, the odds of my being on top of something that happened in a Committee my boss wasn't assigned to -- like the Judiciary Committee -- were slim.

Furthermore, my deputies and I -- as Wyden's communications director -- could barely keep up with all of the questions and requests we got from reporters. We didn't have the time or resources to tweet about everything he did, let alone proactively promote all of his work. I mean, just writing and distributing a press release can take a few hours, coming up with a messaging strategy, educating reporters, planning events and writing the various one-pagers, FAQs, op-eds and speeches needed to support a successful advocacy campaign can take days, weeks, even months and that's if nothing else is going on (which is rarely the case).

The day Senator Wyden put a hold on COICA, was the same day he introduced legislation to amend the Affordable Care Act with Senator Scott Brown. I was getting inundated with questions from reporters and bloggers wanting to understand "why in the hell he'd do such a thing," plus the Democratic caucus wanted us to put out and promote a statement pushing for the repeal of Don't Ask Don't Tell, which had my deputy tied up, in addition to the various other things that tended to make the end of session a sprint.

I didn't jump at the opportunity to publicize my boss's hold announcement, because I didn't know enough about the issue to judge its news value, let alone explain it to reporters or write a quick press release, and I didn't have the time to learn enough about it to do any of those things before the end of the day. So, I told my chief of staff "great" and went back to talking to reporters about health policy.

Again, I'm not proud of the above story, but I was moved to share it, when I read that Techdirt's coverage of the COICA/PIPA/SOPA debate ultimately cost them more than 50% of their advertising revenue and has since forced them to operate at a loss.

I don't want to imagine a tech debate without Techdirt in it.

I can't even begin to imagine how the COICA/PIPA/SOPA debate would have gone without Mike Masnick and Techdirt's coverage.

But I can imagine where I -- personally -- would have been without Techdirt's coverage. All I have to do is close my eyes and remember November 18, 2010. Now, as much as I'd like to tell you that Mike's November post on Ron Wyden's COICA hold changed everything for me, it didn't. One post couldn't make me an expert on Internet issues any more than a single story could have won the debate. But I can say the more I learned about the issues surrounding COICA and later PIPA and SOPA – and the more confident I grew in my knowledge and ability to explain those issues -- the more involved I got, the more press releases, speeches, FAQ's and blogs I wrote in support of Ron's work, the more reporters I talked to, coverage I influenced, and interviews I secured for the senator.

I can also say, I wouldn't have been able to do any of those things (at least not well) without Mike Masnick and the rest of the guys at Techdirt, because they're the guys who taught me tech policy.

That's not to say, I didn't work with really smart people who taught me a lot, I did and they did; but with Techdirt, I never had to ask a stupid question or admit what I didn't know. (I just kept reading.) Techdirt's posts were consistently straightforward, easy to understand and timely. Sure, another site might put together one or two good posts or a definitive explainer, but reading Techdirt every day was like taking a college course on the issues with every new post helping me understand a new aspect of what I'd learned previously. I often found some of the site's shorter posts and illustrative examples the most helpful, because they were the examples I ultimately used to explain the issues to others. For example, I've yet to find a better way to get someone to see the potential harm bills like SOPA and PIPA can do to free speech than pointing out that Universal once tried to blacklist 50 Cent's personal website, a fact I learned from a 6/21/11 Techdirt post, entitled "Did Universal Music Declare 50 Cent's Own Website A Pirate Site?" (Seriously, that story alone helped me convince at least a dozen – non-tech – reporters to write about the issue, not to mention all of the Hill staffers I shared it with.)

Now, I understand that some of you may be tempted to write my experience off as unique (or flame me for asking you to sympathize with Congressional staffers), but I guarantee not having enough hours in the day was not an affliction unique to my experience. I'd also argue that good lobbyists derive less power from campaign contributions than they do from helping tired, overworked, Congressional staffers "understand" complex issues.

Lobbyists are experts at framing their client's positions in ways that sound like non-controversial no-brainers. They're so good at it, that most of them have even been convinced by their own arguments. A seasoned staffer who understands the issue at play will see through the lobbyist's ploy (and realize the offers of assistance aren't really "help"), but there aren't very many seasoned staffers who work on Internet and tech policy. To create those staffers and make the lobbyist's job harder, means helping those overworked staffers learn these issues, with short, easily digestible information that makes the problems with the lobbyists' sales pitch easy to discern. And, speaking from experience, no one is better at that than Techdirt.

Now, one of the sad realities of our political system is the fact that helping for-profit entities maintain the advantages that made them profitable pays a lot more than advocating for the public interest, which – if you're lucky – might yield you a pat on the back. But just because something isn't done for the money, doesn't mean those who do it don't have to earn a living. Saving the Internet shouldn't force Mike's staff to take pay cuts or his kids to go hungry.

If you care about a free and open Internet, you want Techdirt to be at full strength in the Net Neutrality debate. You want them to be educating more lawmakers and their staffers (like my former self) to understand these issues and be confident enough in their knowledge to take a stand against the cable companies and their lobbyists.

I'm donating to Techdirt's campaign because I know where I would have been without their work and I don't want a tech debate to take place without them. I hope you will do the same. It's also a great way to say thanks.

Click here to support Techdirt's crowdfunding campaign »

Filed Under: coica, crowdfunding, independent reporting, internet policy, net neutrality, pipa, ron wyden, sopa

Can't We All Get Along: Principles Over Policy; Ideas Over Ideology

from the the-declaration-is-a-process dept

It's been really fantastic to see what's happened in the last week, since the Declaration of Internet Freedom was announced, leading to widespread discussion online (and lots of individuals and organizations signing on to support it). There was a ton of press coverage, and plenty of valuable feedback and thoughts.

I did want to respond to one of the most common criticisms I've been seeing: some are complaining that the principles are "too vague" and an awful lot of people seem upset that their specific policy goal isn't there. For example, the Declaration makes no mention of copyright or patent reform, and this has some people upset. Others are upset in the other direction, claiming that a lack of mention of copyright means that this document is really just a nefarious "specter" seeking to do away with copyright entirely. Meanwhile, others have looked at some of the groups involved, and because those groups have espoused a different political ideology in the past, assumed that this document is really a "secret" plan to put in place a preferred system of government.

So I want to clarify what some of the thinking was here, and why these criticisms are misguided. Those of us who put out the document should certainly take the blame for not necessarily explaining all of this upfront, but there's only so much explaining you can do.

Principles, Not Policy

Pretty early on in the discussion over this document, it was decided that we needed to focus on higher level principles, and not policy. This is the part that I think is confusing people the most. They think that this document is a policy document or that it's supposed to directly lead us to a specific policy. It is not. The document is the starting point in a process that we hope will bring more people together. This is a discussion. And rather than start at the end, we sought to put together some broad principles, and see if we could get most people to agree to them. If we focus on the principles first, and have a common understanding, we can move towards a more practical discussion. Too often, the fights over policy have little to do with principle, but rather are focused on "who benefits the most" or "why is this good for me." Part of the goal of this document was to get people to stop, take a step back and say "let's look at the fundamental principles."

Some have complained that the principles are too broad -- or even that nobody could possibly disagree with them (amusingly, those messages seem to come in at the same time as ones that do vehemently disagree with them). Indeed, the principles are broad, but that's on purpose. Again, the idea was to set forth the basic principles that we can get the majority of the world to agree on, because that opens up the possibility of moving forward based on principle, rather than on pet-project ambition or direct personal gain. So, yes, they're broad, and yes many people will agree with them. That's the point. The goal is to frame the discussion in a useful manner, and you don't do that by demanding something that most people don't agree with.

Ideas, Not Ideology:

The people who put this document together represent a very, very broad coalition, with many different viewpoints, political persuasions, geographic worldviews, etc. This was by design. The idea was to transcend silly and wasteful partisan bickering, and focus on these core principles to which the ideas matter, not the ideology. One of the most disappointing responses to this was that some people (including some who I consider friends) have tried to shift this into an ideological dispute, suggesting incorrectly that these principles were really all about one political ideology dominating, just because a small fraction of the coalition has, in the past, been associated with that ideology.

Unfortunately, all this is doing is taking a non-ideological, non-partisan (or even post-partisan) effort to get beyond silly partisan bickering... and trying to drag it back down into such a useless muck. This is a shame.

We have a chance here to move forward, together, as a wider internet community, and discuss a variety of ideas based on their merits, not based on "your team" winning. This isn't about any particular team, which is why we built such a broad coalition. This was about what is best for this thing that we all rely on: the internet.

Can't We All Get Along?

I know that this won't satisfy everyone. And others will complain that the principles still are too broad and too vague and don't mention their pet policy issue. But this is a process, not an end product. No one involved in the coalition that put this document together thinks that we (individually, or as a group) can speak for the world. What we wanted was a starting point for a wider discussion -- one that wasn't based on ideology or partisan bickering. We wanted something that started a discussion about actual ideas and principles and the question of what is really best for the internet and all its citizens.

And, from there, a discussion should ensue, with more milestones down the road. Many of us are already talking about the next steps in this process -- and, no, it's not about policy recommendations or specific political parties or ideology. It's about getting more people thinking and engaging and discussing.

To me, personally, that seems like a laudable goal. And I hope others think so too.

Filed Under: declaration of internet freedom, internet policy, transparency