The Declaration of Internet Freedom

Internet freedom has recently been a major issue. With Congressional bills like CISPA, SOPA, and PIPA that threaten our security, privacy, and freedom on the internet, digital rights groups have been trying to come up with things like the “Digital Bill of Rights” which give legislators rules, similar to the United States’ Bill of Rights, that they must never break (although we’ve all seen how that’s been working lately). Another recent launch on this front is the Declaration of Internet Freedom.

The declaration includes a short preamble and a list of items it deems essential. You can read it in full for yourself here, and the list of essential items follows:

• Expression: Don’t censor the Internet.
• Access: Promote universal access to fast and affordable networks.
• Openness: Keep the Internet an open network where everyone is free to connect, communicate, write, read, watch, speak, listen, learn, create and innovate.
• Innovation: Protect the freedom to innovate and create without permission. Don’t block new technologies, and don’t punish innovators for their users’ actions.
• Privacy: Protect privacy and defend everyone’s ability to control how their data and devices are used.

While this is a nice thing, supported by groups from the American Civil Liberties Union and the Electronic Frontier Foundation to Reddit, the problem is that it legally has no affect. At its most effective it is something for people to rally around. I’m not saying it’s a bad thing, but I doubt it will have much impact.