roundtable: a new Bill of Rights 1-2
roundtable: a new Bill of Rights 1/2
a new Bill of Rights 1/2
Richard K. Moore (rkmoore@iol.ie)
Thu, 19 Jan 1995 16:49:57 +0000
Message-Id: <199501191654.QAA20755@GPO.iol.ie>
Date: Thu, 19 Jan 1995 16:49:57 +0000
To: gii-doc@cpsr.org
From: rkmoore@iol.ie (Richard K. Moore)
Subject: a new Bill of Rights 1/2
Dear cyber citizens,
CPSR set up the GII-DOC working group to investigate
the issues involved in a global information
infrastructure, and to develop a position paper on
that topic for use by CPSR and other affiliated
organizations.
Recently, a consensus seems to have emerged within
gii-doc that one of the core documents needed will be
a "Bill of Rights" for cyberspace.
Such a document would presumably address our most
heartfelt concerns as cyber citizens, and would be
useful in the NII debate. It would also be one part of
a broader document addressing overall GII issues.
Several of us have agreed that work on such a Bill of
Rights should begin immediately.
I am submitting the following draft of a "Bill of
Rights" for consideration by gii-doc and other
interested parties.
Richard K. Moore (rkmoore@iol.ie)
Wexford, Ireland
19 January 1995
====================================================
[begin Bill of Rights 1/2]
====================================================
A Bill of Rights for Cyberspace
----------------------------------------------------
1.0 The conceptualization of cyberspace
It is straightforward and natural to map the language
our 18th Century Bill of Rights onto the landscape of
this new and very real (if also virtual) frontier. The
situation - colonizing an immense new space - is
identical.
The non-straightforward part is to *develop consensus
around how cyberspace is to be conceptualized*. If we
conceptualize it as a space that enables virtual
communities, collectively empowered to pursue
participatory democracy, then a Bill of Rights can be
discussed like any other topic of mutual interest.
---
But this isn't at all the conceptualization that is
capturing mindshare in the nation's capital, nor
seemingly in the telecommunications/broadcast
industry.
Instead, what *is* catching on is a conceptualization
along these lines:
(1) Cyberspace is a new, multi-tiered, market
opportunity.
(2) One tier - the infrastructure itself - will be
a multi-billion dollar communications
construction project, and an ongoing network.
(3) The other tier, "information-providing", is a
revolutionary, dynamic new universe of markets
that will lead who-knows-where.
(4) The issues to be resolved about cyberspace
are:
(a) property rights in information
(b) a business model for the
infrastructure layer
(c) models for taxes, tariffs, and
accounting
(d) selection of a regulatory paradigm
(e) the shakeout of industry players
---
This conceptualization is not "wrong", and the issues
identified are indeed ones that deserve prompt
attention and resolution so that cyberspace can
proceed on a rational basis.
The problem is that this conceptualization does not
reach any further - it does not grasp the full social
potential of that universe which it so eagerly
anticipates cashing in on.
---
Those of us who have already time-travelled ahead and
lived in a real cyberspace - the collective Internet
community - have an informed understanding of the
higher level issues to be resolved in any new
cyberspace:
(1) Who has the right to visit there?
(2) Who can associate with whom, and with what
privacy?
(3) Who is allowed to say what, and to whom?
(4) Who adjudicates conflicts which arise within
and among communities?
---
I believe both conceptualizations are correct and that
both agendas are of the highest priority. The problem
is: only only one of these conceptualizations has any
visible mindshare among those busy laying down the
"law of the land" for the cyberspace infrastructure.
Their agenda *will* accomplish its stated mission - to
create the infrastructure to support rational business
development in the new marketplace of distributed
electronic communications and information.
But the enabling legislation and regulatory framework
(or lack thereof) being rapidly defined to accomplish
that mission will establish an environment which is
very likely to preclude any favorable resolution of
the higher-level issues of cyberspace communities.
Very possibly, the environment available to citizens
of a fully commercialized cyberspace will have more
the flavor of Prodigy, than the flavor of a privately
maintained Internet bulletin board.
If this happens, then the content of cyber discourse
will be limited to least-common-denominator, PG-rated,
publicly postable messages. And the opportunity to
form communities that want to deal privately with
serious and controversial matters will be lost.
---
If we want to avoid such a democratically sterile
cyber future, we need to extend the current debate in
Washington to include the concerns and the informed
understanding of those millions who have already lived
in the future.
We need to build into the "law of the land" for
cyberspace, currently being drafted in Washington,
provisions to insure the development of free and open
virtual communities.
In other words, the "Constitution" being crafted by
the government and the communications vendors must
have tacked onto it a "Bill of Rights" to guarantee
appropriate freedoms to the individual cyber citizen.
----------------------------------------------------
2.0 The Internet precedent
Internet, which serves as a working example of one
implementation of cyberspace, is ever so much more
than the underlying infrastructure of modems, phone
links, personal computers, and online databases.
Only a gifted science-fiction writer might have
predicted the rich social structures, and inter-
personal communication patterns, that have arisen upon
that infrastructure of bytes and wires.
The ease with which groups of people can gather
together on Internet, and readily communicate with one
another across differences of time zones, working
schedules, and walks of life, has effectively extended
the definition of what we mean by "community".
A scattered group of scientists who want to
collaborate these days, will typically form a
temporary community on Internet. They share that
community as they jointly explore their topic and co-
author their report. The scientists pass work and
ideas back and forth as easily as if their offices had
been moved to a common building. And that's the
feeling they get, as they do the work, that they
really are part of a "virtual" community.
This model recurs on the Internet daily - throughout
the world - for groups of people who share a concern,
want to talk business, or just want to get to know one
another better.
Just as a mind is something beyond a collection of
neurons (Which neuron appreciates Bach?) - so does the
community-facilitating aspect of cyberspace transcend
the computing/communications infrastructure that gives
it birth.
To formulate appropriate "laws of the land" for
cyberspace, we need to take into account what we've
learned from the Internet experience. The "Internet
culture" has evolved over many years, and has
developed prototype solutions to many of the problems
which will be inherent in any future cyberspace
realization.
To ignore this experience in planning a scaled-up
cyberspace, would be to waste the lessons visible
through this fortunately available window on the
future.
----------------------------------------------------
3.0 Internet lessons for cyberspace
When very large groups of geographically dispersed
people can communicate rapidly among one another, and
when each person can attend to those communications
whenever it's convenient, without a need to
synchronize schedules with the rest of the group, then
a flowering of social and work patterns arises which
is quite independent of the *means* of communication
employed.
Thus cyberspace is primarily about the new patterns of
social relationships which it enables, and only
secondarily about the architecture of moving and
storing information.
That is how the term "cyberspace" came into being - it
connotes a virtual "place" where people enter in,
gather together, establish communities, and then
interact with one another within those communities.
People who use Internet regularly - and that's
millions worldwide - find that those communities
become an intrinsic part of their daily lives. The
communities become essential components of work,
learning, socializing, and interest sharing.
If someone is deprived of their Internet access, they
lose contact with their functioning communities, and
they suffer a loss as real as if they couldn't find
transport to their job or to their local town center.
They become isolated in significant ways.
We've moved far beyond the days when online
participants were hobbyists, and most of their time
was spent playing dungeons and dragons. Internet
communities are part of real life now, in
universities, corporations, public interest groups,
government agencies -- literally everywhere people
have access to a telephone and a terminal.
----------------------------------------------------
[end of Bill of Rights 1/2]
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