I commute by road when I am not catching the train. That is typically at least a one hour journey if I go to the UoW campus or a two hour journey if I go to Sydney.

I listen to a lot of podcasts during those trips. One that I regularly find quite brilliant is a radio program produced by the ABC in Australia called Big Ideas.

The most recent episode of Big Ideas featured a lecture by Geoffrey Robertson, the eminent QC. The topic is “The Statute Of Liberty” – in it he was talking about the need for an Australian Bill of Rights. And he made a pretty damn fine argument to support his thesis.

He talked about how Australia had been so advanced in its thinking in regard to so many things, like the concept of a universal franchise (even thought Aboriginals were disallowed from voting even after women could vote). He talked a lot of sense, and I urge you to find the podcast and download it if you have any interest at all in civics….

But that is not the point of this piece….

The concept of an Australian Bill Of Rights got me thinking about the need for an “Internet Bill Of Rights”.

In an environment (the online one) where there is so much freedom, what is emerging is an “underbelly” class of criminals that take advantage of the lack of borders for distributing digital information. These criminals create the perfect excuse for governments to do what they seemingly always want to do: in the name of law enforcement, curtail your ability to use the software of your choice, watch the content released by the TV studios, and to generally spoil what you want to do.

In an environment where there is no stated right of the user (you and I) it is pretty easy for the authorities to ensure that a lot of the things that we do that are on the cusp so to speak, will become illegal. This is happening right now – a concerted effort by governments around the world to ring fence the Internet. So that presents a dilemma for any of us who is concerned about the freedoms that all politicians go on about, but very few ever really care about.

We need to define what our rights are online.

These truths are self-evident. Everyone who is able to be connected should be able to access all available information freely and without constraint from corporation, politician or bureaucrat. All individuals who are on line can touch content, modify it, and communicate it, as long as any content that is so touched or amended does not result in profit for the amender….

I think that something like that might be a good start. What do you think?

Imagine what would happen if we could get a half a billion people to sign a petition calling for it…

That would be pretty cool, don't you think?

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