[liberationtech] Web Inventor Releases Ambitious Plan to Take Back Net

[Catherine Fitzpatrick]

 This "contract" was likely drafted by the NGO Access Now, which has worked on this for years and is associated with this effort. Access now is led by Andrew McLaughlin, formerly of Google, and Berkman and the Obama Administration and many other things, and Brett Solomon, the other Australian, who has been promoting these fuzzy but extremist views for years with little criticism.
It is not a democratic exercise by any stretch of the imagination as NGOs, however much they are needed in society, are advocacy organizations, not democratic organizations, and this is not a legislative exercise by a democratically-elected Congress in a liberal democracy under the rule of law. I would prefer Congress as a drafting body than a group of hackers who support Snowden.
In that sense, it's very good it is not binding because it comes out of the Benevolent Dictatorship hacker culture and warmed-over Google opportunism.
There is nothing about protecting private property and copyright which are actually what made the Internet viable, such as it is.
Any effort involving "an Internet Bill of Rights" or "Guiding Principles" that sound like the UN should not succeed because it is not democratic or legitimate.
Tim Berners-Lee engineered into the Internet its very flaws bothering people so much today: collectivism, lack of private property and copyright protection, "sharing of knowledge" uber alles, andlack of privacy. 
Catherine Fitzpatrick
    On Thursday, November 28, 2019, 12:19:55 PM EST, Thomas Delrue <thomas at epistulae.net> wrote:  
 
 On 11/24/19 10:31 PM, Yosem Companys wrote:
> The contract is non-binding, however. And funders and partners in the
> endeavor include Google and Facebook, whose data-collecting business
> models and sensation-rewarding algorithms have been blamed for
> exacerbating online toxicity.

I'm a little confused by the choice of words in the term "contract for
the web"... Can someone explain to me what exactly a non-binding
contract is?
The first 7 words of the Wikipedia entry for 'contract' are literally "A
contract is a legally binding agreement". How can a 'legally binding
agreement' be non-binding?
MW has as its first entry for 'contract' the following "a binding
agreement between two or more persons or parties especially : one
legally enforceable".

Forgive my cynicism, but what exactly will this do or accomplish if it
isn't binding, except to make some folks feel warm and fuzzy for signing
something that will be forgotten in a heartbeat?
Surely, this is nothing more than a PR stunt? It's about as vacuous as
the statement "Don't be evil" (by google) or "We care about your
privacy" (by facebook), no?

Don't get me wrong, I'm happy that TBL has started this conversation, as
it is one to be had. However, without the binding-ness, the good
intentions and desires, outlined in the 'contract', will go no-where.
Unfortunately, we don't need more conversation on this subject, we need
actual change, and that requires enforceability.

If the purpose of making it non-enforceable was to make sure entities
like google or facebook signed as well, then I ask "why? Why do they
have to sign as well"? Especially if they are the highest probability
candidates to violate the intention of the document. Why would it have
been important for them to sign something that will make no difference?
Why not leave them excluded and let them be on display for the predatory
entities that they are?
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