Reddit Writes A Law: First Draft Of The Free Internet Act Emerges

I saw this today and thought it relevent, considering we are using the internet to read this. I have to hand it to the people responsible for this. Most people just sit around, armchair speculate and complain, these folks are actually trying to do something.

Here's a snippet from the main article:

As we noted last month, the community at Reddit responded to the whole SOPA mess by deciding that they should collaborate to write their own piece of legislation that protects internet freedoms. The first draft of the Free Internet Act is now available as an open Google doc, where there are additional edits and comments going on as we speak.

Source Article

It's an interesting thing to look at. When I opened the google doc, to many folks were editing it, so it was locked!

Link to open Google doc

I think it's about time we internet users police ourselves a bit, and perhaps throw our world governments some ideas of our own. I haven't made my way through the entire document yet, but it seems that the "internet hive mind" is busy at work. Remember, some of the people editing this are actual lawyers, law students, technology experts and people just like you and me.

Time will tell if the community behind this has enough traction to get it noticed by politicians. It's certainly interesting to watch!

I will admit that it's a DRAFT. I read quite a bit of statues in my job, and this thing isn't ready for Congress anytime soon. What I find fascinating is that it's a "living" piece of work. As I'm typing this, an unknown number of people are editing it in real-time.

If it were up to me, the draft phase would be for a specified amount of time. After the "free for all draft phase", the "community" would nominate and select a core group of the most qualified people to clean it up and make several revisions.

I've never participated in something like this, nor do I feel the need to on this one (I think they have it covered, I can't really lend much to it). But I do enjoy watching the internet evolve from more than just IRC chat and simple web pages for people's favorite bands.

reply to post by MystikMushroom


Do you believe the internet is quietly and slowly and inadvertently giving us the give mentality?

reply to post by sirjunlegun


My personal feeling is that the internet is a complex non-organic system. In organic systems, (from my limited knowledge) the more complex they become -- the greater the chance that self-awareness may emerge.

I believe at some point the internet *may* become self-aware, but not in the sense of what we view "awareness". It would not surprise me that if in 50 years a government tries to pull the plug on the 'net and ... it displays a sense of awareness and protects itself. The internet is our child, just as we are children of the Earth.

A very good episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation covers some of the themes I'm getting at. It is titled "The Quality of Life" and involves newly developed robots that have become so complex, they are self aware.



We are literally laying a metaphorical non-organic neural network via fiber optics, server racks and "nodes". We are giving the Earth a "brain" if you will, containing the collective works of the human species.

This is a pretty awesome intiative. I am skeptical it will have an effect on current RIAA-bought politicians, but at least they are doing something, and taking the fight to them.

My thread about it

Originally posted by MystikMushroom
I will admit that it's a DRAFT. I read quite a bit of statues in my job, and this thing isn't ready for Congress anytime soon. What I find fascinating is that it's a "living" piece of work. As I'm typing this, an unknown number of people are editing it in real-time.

If it were up to me, the draft phase would be for a specified amount of time. After the "free for all draft phase", the "community" would nominate and select a core group of the most qualified people to clean it up and make several revisions.

I'm glad it's not up to you. That isn't how the Internet works; and in time, it also hopefully won't be how the offline world works, either.