Re: Bill of Rights <fwd>

[Adam Shostack <adam@bwh.harvard.edu>]

|  I'm enclosing a document put together by Frank Connolly at American
|  University that is the most carefully articulated document establishing
|  networking protocol I have come across.
| 
|  David Way
| 
|  ================   TEXT OF THE BILL FOLLOWS ===============================
| 
|  PREAMBLE
| 
|  In order to protect the rights and recognize the responsibilities of
|  individuals and institutions, we, the members of the
|  educational community, propose this Bill of Rights and
|  Responsibilities for the Electronic Community of Learners.
|  These principles are based on a recognition that the electronic
|  community is a complex subsystem of the educational
|  community founded on the values espoused by that community.

	The electronic community comes from many sources, including
military and hacker communities.  It can easily be argued that DARPA &
hacker built bbses created the electronic community before the
'educational community' ever got involved.  


|  ARTICLE I: INDIVIDUAL RIGHTS
| 
|  The original Bill of Rights explicitly recognized that all
|  individuals have certain fundamental rights as members of the
|  national community. In the same way, the citizens of the
|  electronic community of learners have fundamental rights that
|  empower them.
| 
|  Section 1.
|  A citizen's access to computing and information resources shall
|  not be denied or removed without just cause.

	What is just cause?  Can I demand access to the CrayCo NSA
machine?  Thats a computing resource I'd be able to do useful &
interesting medical research with.

|  Section 2.
|  The right to access includes the right to appropriate training and
|  tools required to effect access.

	Who pays for this right?  A modem tax?

|  Section 3.
|  All citizens shall have the right to be informed about personal
|  information that is being and has been collected about them, and
|  have the right to review and correct that information,.  Personal
|  information about a citizen shall not be used for other than the
|  expressed purpose of its collection without the explicit
|  permission of that citizen.
|
|  Section 4.
|  The constitutional concept of freedom of speech applies to
|  citizens of electronic communities.

	What about non-citizens?  Inteligent agents?

|  Section 5.
|  All citizens of the electronic community of learners have
|  ownership rights over their own intellectual works.

	So the workers who build & maintain this system have no
rights, as they are not members of the 'community of learners?'

	Anyway, the document as a whole was far, far too interested in
creating and maintaining the status quo through legalisms.  I'm much
more interested in allowing the network to generate and regulate
itself the way that the net has been doing for the past while.  I'd
counterpropose the following ammendment to ensure this.



	"Congress shall make no law regulating or controlling the
content or use of privately held means of communications, nor
monopolizing or nationalizing a privatly constructed or owned
communications system.  This ammendment shall explicitly apply to the
governments of each of the several states."



Adam