Internet Bill of Rights

The concept of an 'Internet Bill of Rights' is something I have been thinking about lately, a lot.

Does the internet need it's own Bill of Rights?

The way social media is waging a war on it's own users in order to force them into some weird conformity reminds of school and how you had to fit their narrow architecture of a student or you ran into problems.

However, I know precisely fuck all about Bills of Rights. I have much reading to do.

So why do I bring this up?

To be 100% honest, the same reason why I generally try to bring up any subject or ask any question on this, my internet home;

To hear what you all think, to learn from you and be entertained. I try and provide the same, to a degree, in fair exchange. (not saying I succeed)

So, The Internet Bill of Right;

What should it contain and protect? How do you enforce it? How do you get it put in place and by who? Who has the right to ratify it? Who should it NOT protect? And, would it ultimately be a long needed examination of The First Amendment in the Electric Age?

What are your, ye of Fires of Heaven, thought on an honest and just Internet Bill of Rights.

Does the Internet need a Bill of Rights?

In my opinion, yes.

Social media sites, search engines, broadcast providers, and news media have all shown they will use the internet in grossly obscene ways that should be questionable under the current 1st amendment of the USA but are not because there are not proper legal definitions for what most sites on the internet even are.

It used to be simple, they either made money or did they not. A lot of them made money, shit got complicated fast. Now what is Facebook? A public forum? A broadcast provider? A publisher? No one really knows, same with Twitter. Youtube should have been a largely unbiased Broadcast Provider, the Internets Cable Access Channel, but it went the other route. So what is it now? Not an open broadcast provider, so a publisher?

There are so many questions to be asked, each spawning more questions as answered. This is a good thing, and in my opinion needs to happen.

Lives and fortunes are made and lost over some very simple online interactions. What protects those when the internet itself via large scale platforms are free to abuse their power on the very users of the internet?

So the question is, does the internet need a bill of rights in the first place? The hows, means, details are seemingly infinite and are deeply entwined with the whys and why-nots or if it is even feasible at all.

I think it something that needs to be, at the least, considered.

Dom said:

It would be impossible to enforce outside of the presence of a global government or entity that had oversight, which would be an incredibly dangerous thing in of itself. The amount of power that would be available would be staggering.

I'll be damned if I let some asshole in Britain tell me that I'm not allowed to jerk off to facesitting porn.

Let it be the wild west again with only protections that prevent censorship of any sort and be done with it.

Click to expand...

Yeah, that is the biggest problem is the global nature of the internet coupled with the nationalist priorities of the 'home' nations.

One of the things I see, and it scares the living shit out of me, is a global crackdown on hate speech especially that directed towards Muslims/Islam. We have seen it occur in Europe and a push for it in Canada, I have seen pushes to make Hate Speech online punishable throughout the world.

I think an 'internet bill of rights' is too much too soon, the concept alone has people scratching their heads in bewilderment.

Sites like Youtube/facebook/et al. should be better defined and thus regulated so that current existing 'rights' will better protect internet users.