Online principles
Let's assume we tried to create an Amnesty International-like organization for online life. (Yes, EFF does this. I'm a huge fan of EFF.) What would the principles of this global organization be? I tried to draft a list this afternoon:
Online Principles
1. Human beings are naturally inclined towards trust and collaboration. Policies of intermediaries or governments that frustrate trust and collaboration should be viewed with suspicion.
2. The world is a complex and diverse place. Conflicting values can coexist online. Policies of intermediaries or governments that attempt to impose unitary values — and, in particular, that attempt to build such values into low levels of the protocol stack — should be viewed with suspicion.
3. Any group or government that attempts to impose its values online on another group or government should be viewed with suspicion.
4. As much as possible, decisions about what should happen online should be implemented at the edge of the network.
5. As much as possible, decisions about what individuals should be able to do online should be made by those individuals themselves.
6. Netizens want to widen their contacts with people who are distant from them in time and space. Policies of intermediaries or governments that frustrate this contact should be viewed with suspicion.
7. Any machine or device should be allowed to connect to the internet as long as it respects basic protocols. Policies of intermediaries or governments that frustrate this connection should be viewed with suspicion.
8. Online access should not be conditioned on provision of government-mandated identifying information.
9. Individuals should have a choice of modes of online access available to them, at reasonable prices. One of those choices must allow individuals to host content themselves.
10. Individuals who subscribe to these principles should be ready to act collectively when necessary.
Here are the deliverables this AI-like set of affiliates could have: people could brand themselves as netizens (suggest another word if you don't like that one); smart-mob-like protests could be organized against initiatives that seemed to run counter to these principles; and ISPs that didn't measure up could be boycotted.
More deliverables would be good, but I need suggestions. Creative Commons had something to offer — licensing terms. This new group would be a loose union of citizens of the internet, and wouldn't have a license to offer. What else could this group of people offer to the world? How do you instantiate online freedom?