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karl@cavebear.com
Date: October 8, 2018 5:27:17 JST

[via dave farber]

I find the declaration intriguing, but I fear that it will be unable to launch, much less fly, because it is too heavily laden with contentious issues (such as the right to be forgotten - which, by-the-way, I support).

For more than a decade I have been advocating a rather shorter formulation that I believe is an initial step that can be more easily reached. This formulation is, of course, in need of interpretation in order to sharpen the distinctions that it makes.

First Law of the Internet

https://www.cavebear.com/old_cbblog/000059.html

+ Every person shall be free to use the Internet in any way that
is privately beneficial without being publicly detrimental.

- The burden of demonstrating public detriment shall be on those who
wish to prevent the private use.

- Such a demonstration shall require clear and convincing evidence of
public detriment.

- The public detriment must be of such degree and extent as to justify
the suppression of the private activity.

(By-the-way, I got the ideas for this out of the old 1954 Hush-A-Phone decision and some of the subsequent cases, such as Carterphone and MIC, that tried to define the boundary between what was then a monolithic and intensely controlling "the telephone company" and users who wanted to do more than simply talk.)


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