In essence, the 1st amendment does in fact protect digital assembly and all aspects of expression; written posts, videos, art work and sharing information. All free of all restrictions, such as regional zones, subject matter, etc.
Online assembly and communication with others can and should be completely anonymous, that is without any digital ID, location info, or attribution to the carrier or account of the individuals involved.
Basically, the whole internet should go back to the completely unrestricted nature it had in the early days, like in the early 2000's.
People have a Natural Right to freely Associate with each other. This works best in a decentralized system, without authorities, because each of us are our own authority.
On another note, you started with the concept of No Objective Reality; in my view, you are quite right. We each experience a different vantage point of similar experiences, even if those are from the same event or object. Also, I typically say that we live in the world we create. Every minute is an opportunity to find ourselves in each scene. Those who have optimism, will experience the positive perception of things more often than the pessimistic alternative.
Also, while we agree with the right to be anonymous online, we also agree with the right to assemble and have that place have non-anonymous members too. Not all of online of course, but sometimes people who strive to be high trust want to think with other people who they at least know are not bots or ai. So while the internet itself should never have a requirement to enter, if a website wanted to, and people consented to be there, we do see value in that because collaboration is built on trust. And collaboration in problem solving is the most powerful force in the known universe. But it is hard to harness correctly without trust.
People should be encouraged to meet others in real life and exchange public keys (and one time crypto pads in my opinion to mitigate eventual quantum computing encryption failures).
We should assume that the 1st amendment grants us all freedom of communication, on paper and digital. And all freedom of assembly. The founders didn't have computers. But they did want us to have freedom.
Not a lawyer, but my view is that freedom of speech and freedom of press cover spoken words and written words, respectively. Therefore the government can't criminalize either, unless those words are used in the commissioning of a crime (e.g. fraud committed by falsifying written documents)
I don't think freedom of assembly should cover some sort of metaphorical right of digital assembly, however--that seems like a twisting of the original law, and such things should be avoided generally.
However, regulating the web isn't an enumerated power of the federal govt, so that could only be granted by constitutional amendment (judicial rulings on the commerce clause be damned).
Still think that would allow for states to impose their own laws consistent with their own state constitutions, which could include making it illegal to access certain web pages. I'm not saying states *should* do that, but denying people the ability to democratically proscribe activities they detest at a local level is a formula for unrest and social breakdown.
Tangential to this discussion: on awakening this morning, I was thinking about the explosion of 2FA requirements (github just forced it on me yesterday) and how client-side certificates would solve it. Then I wondered if certbot certs would fit the bill. If they do, all one needs is their own domain cert to login everywhere. So followed the idea: there should be a top-level domain that grants everyone born on earth a free domain, using their name and GPS coordinates at time of birth.
This requires a lot more thought. Obviously it's a huge fail for privacy. It only potentially solves online authentication and digital signatures. But that's a huge win.
@John (jc) Comeau I like this direction. Our identity should not be managed or held hostage by digital vendors, banks or countries. We may become citizens if we agree to the mutually beneficial social contract of where we live but our identity should not be subservient to such a contract.
I have a suspicion (reasonably strong and shared by one or two others) that the LetsEncrypt free SSL certificate vendor is a NSA or similar trojan horse. I authenticates the majority of personal web sites on the net I think. Either to monitor site activity or possibly at a needed moment perform mass scale or simply targeted denial of service on sites that are not 'acceptable'. Over time the environment has been allowed to degrade to such a point that browsers get all choked up if a site does not have valid certificate.
We are being slowly forced to build walls around us and live in little digital cages and the keys are going to be soon held by unkind forces.
In essence, the 1st amendment does in fact protect digital assembly and all aspects of expression; written posts, videos, art work and sharing information. All free of all restrictions, such as regional zones, subject matter, etc.
Online assembly and communication with others can and should be completely anonymous, that is without any digital ID, location info, or attribution to the carrier or account of the individuals involved.
Basically, the whole internet should go back to the completely unrestricted nature it had in the early days, like in the early 2000's.
People have a Natural Right to freely Associate with each other. This works best in a decentralized system, without authorities, because each of us are our own authority.
On another note, you started with the concept of No Objective Reality; in my view, you are quite right. We each experience a different vantage point of similar experiences, even if those are from the same event or object. Also, I typically say that we live in the world we create. Every minute is an opportunity to find ourselves in each scene. Those who have optimism, will experience the positive perception of things more often than the pessimistic alternative.
Also, while we agree with the right to be anonymous online, we also agree with the right to assemble and have that place have non-anonymous members too. Not all of online of course, but sometimes people who strive to be high trust want to think with other people who they at least know are not bots or ai. So while the internet itself should never have a requirement to enter, if a website wanted to, and people consented to be there, we do see value in that because collaboration is built on trust. And collaboration in problem solving is the most powerful force in the known universe. But it is hard to harness correctly without trust.
People should be encouraged to meet others in real life and exchange public keys (and one time crypto pads in my opinion to mitigate eventual quantum computing encryption failures).
Good stuff.
"The truth is a process."
- Alfred North Whitehead
We should assume that the 1st amendment grants us all freedom of communication, on paper and digital. And all freedom of assembly. The founders didn't have computers. But they did want us to have freedom.
Jobst Landgrebe: The Trend Toward Repressive Rule, To What Extent Can It Work?
https://geopoliticsandempire.substack.com/p/jobst-landgrebe-the-trend-toward
Not a lawyer, but my view is that freedom of speech and freedom of press cover spoken words and written words, respectively. Therefore the government can't criminalize either, unless those words are used in the commissioning of a crime (e.g. fraud committed by falsifying written documents)
I don't think freedom of assembly should cover some sort of metaphorical right of digital assembly, however--that seems like a twisting of the original law, and such things should be avoided generally.
However, regulating the web isn't an enumerated power of the federal govt, so that could only be granted by constitutional amendment (judicial rulings on the commerce clause be damned).
Still think that would allow for states to impose their own laws consistent with their own state constitutions, which could include making it illegal to access certain web pages. I'm not saying states *should* do that, but denying people the ability to democratically proscribe activities they detest at a local level is a formula for unrest and social breakdown.
Excellent question - I've never heard it put that way.
Tangential to this discussion: on awakening this morning, I was thinking about the explosion of 2FA requirements (github just forced it on me yesterday) and how client-side certificates would solve it. Then I wondered if certbot certs would fit the bill. If they do, all one needs is their own domain cert to login everywhere. So followed the idea: there should be a top-level domain that grants everyone born on earth a free domain, using their name and GPS coordinates at time of birth.
This requires a lot more thought. Obviously it's a huge fail for privacy. It only potentially solves online authentication and digital signatures. But that's a huge win.
@John (jc) Comeau I like this direction. Our identity should not be managed or held hostage by digital vendors, banks or countries. We may become citizens if we agree to the mutually beneficial social contract of where we live but our identity should not be subservient to such a contract.
I have a suspicion (reasonably strong and shared by one or two others) that the LetsEncrypt free SSL certificate vendor is a NSA or similar trojan horse. I authenticates the majority of personal web sites on the net I think. Either to monitor site activity or possibly at a needed moment perform mass scale or simply targeted denial of service on sites that are not 'acceptable'. Over time the environment has been allowed to degrade to such a point that browsers get all choked up if a site does not have valid certificate.
We are being slowly forced to build walls around us and live in little digital cages and the keys are going to be soon held by unkind forces.