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

[Yosem Companys]

Interesting, Catherine. I appreciate your perspective. In your opinion,
what's the solution to this problem?

Thanks,
Yosem


On Thu, Nov 28, 2019 at 11:47 AM Catherine Fitzpatrick <catfitz at verizon.net>
wrote:

> 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, and
> lack 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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