We celebrate America on July 4th because that is the day in 1776 when the Declaration of Independence was adopted by the Second Continental Congress. The Declaration of Independence is one of the most important documents in history. Even though the brilliant men who wrote it and signed it were largely hypocrites who couldn’t see the self-evident truth that women and blacks were endowed with the same inalienable rights as white male landowners, the fact that they bothered to write them down is a starting gun for the modern march of freedom that even today topples tyranny and oppression.
Nobody will ever write the above paragraph about the “Declaration of Internet Freedom” that is making the rounds this week. In fact, most likely nobody will write anything at all about the Internet Declaration two weeks from now because the document is devoid of anything approaching a coherent articulation of the rights of “the internet” or anybody else.
Apparently, 85 organizations and many people have signed this thing, which looks to capitalize on the grassroots effort to stop SOPA legislation. I’m not sure if anybody involved with the project ran this by a lawyer, because this doesn’t appear to be a serious effort to promote a legal construct that will protect the freedom of anything….
