Paul Venezia of Infoworld has proposed a Bill of Rights for Technology. When naming something a “Bill of Rights” you are attempting to piggy back onto the authority of the first ten amendments to the U.S. Constitution. The Bill of Rights was intended to protect individuals from tyrannical governments. As we take a look at Paul’s six Bills let us see if we can figure out who he is protecting us from.
Article 1. Any individual shall be able to choose anonymity when posting to Internet sites
Similar to ensuring Freedom of Speech, yet it doesn’t guarantee the right to speak and anonymity is not a right in the real world. Paul says, “Let’s be straight — if someone absolutely wants to post anonymously, they will find a way do so, whether allowed or not. Thus, the right to basic anonymity should be maintained. Besides, in the vast majority of cases, an anonymous post will still be traceable to some degree by the site admins, but not by the casual reader.” So we don’t really need this right, right?
Article 2. No network provider may constrain or restrict access to the Internet in any way, shape, or form other than agreed-upon access speeds
OK, so a wireless provider can’t block services like video or VoIP that are in direct competition with paid services. This may be OK for common carriers who operate government granted monopolies, but in a free market you should be able to contract for the services you want and not be forced to pay for services you don’t want. Network neutrality is a smokescreen to restrict the rights of the consumers, especially the less tech savvy ones who have no use for the Internet beyond web browsing and email.
Article 3. No individual shall be held liable for effects of malware or malicious code unknowingly run on a personal computer
OK, so the user, the administrator and the malware writer are all exempt from the damages caused by malware. This makes no sense and leads to the situation we are in today where zombies run rampant and email is almost all spam. Let’s start holding people accountable and see if that doesn’t help the situation. If I own a pool I am expected to take reasonable precautions to ensure someone doesn’t accidentally drown, having a computer connected to the Internet should carry the same responsibility. ISPs should be forced to turn off network connections to infected machines.
Article 4. A company that produces and sells closed source software for use on computers shall be responsible for the security of that product, and a user has a right to seek damages in the event of a failure to secure their product
Ignoring for a moment that we just exempted individuals in Article 3, I do not significantly disagree with this statement. We have exempted software providers from ensuring a reasonable level of quality in favor of innovation. Beta products are now released to the public and remain in beta for years. However, the effects of this article could be chilling. The cost of writing software for health and safety related devices is orders of magnitude higher than that of typical software products. Certainly this cost increase would end the availability of computers in the home. The loop hole non-closed source software is clearly anti-business and thus this article clearly denies people the ability to make money by writing software. This article alone if enacted could bring to an end the age of the computer.
Article 5. Any software or hardware used to conduct or support laws and public policy shall be open-source
This article arises from flaws in devices used to produce evidence against them in criminal matters, whether they are brethalyzers or speed cameras. Certainly these devices can be flawed, but is a radar gun inherently less accurate than the estimate made by a patrolman or vice versa? Voting fraud went on before voting machines were invented and why we can hope to minimize it we can’t realistically expect that it is entirely preventable. Calling for open-source is overkill, merely allowing an audit by a certified independent auditor should be sufficient.
Article 6. Any media content legally purchased by an individual shall be available for private use on any device, at any time
Fair use currently gives you the right to make a copy. This does not force the media provider to make it easy for you to make that copy. If someone sells you a book he is not obligated to provide you a digital copy. If he sells you a DRM protected song so that he can make it available to you via the Internet but protect the copyright holders right to unauthorized distribution he is not obligated to give you an unlocked version. If you do not like these terms then you do not have to buy the product. Legal elimination of content protection would kill the innovation of delivery models.
Paul’s bills do not apparently protect us from some overarching government authority. Rather they seem to be designed to strip away the rights of companies to do business as they please. They seem to favor the elite technophiles at the cost of the ordinary user. Tyranny of the geeks is not something that we should welcome, even if the geeks are well meaning they don’t have the moral authority to make decisions for the rest of society.