Manifesto of free information space

This text aims to state the position on the issue of copyright and information exchange. There is hope that it will be adopted by people to whom it will be close, thus increasing the likelihood of the described ideals being realized.

Manifesto

A person is entitled to:

• sharing any information
• storage and distribution of any information
• protection of information channels

Restrictions on these rights are possible only in two cases:

• voluntary commitment
• by court order as a preventive measure

Why is it possible to translate these ideals into life

First of all, de facto, this has all been working clearly for at least a decade. And if you look in general, these principles have worked throughout the history of our civilization.



By sending information to another person, you naturally realize the first right in the same way as in face-to-face communication. By storing the same bytes on a disk and sharing them, you naturally realize the second right in the same way as you store something in your memory and tell about it to anyone who asks. And, finally, using encryption algorithms, you naturally implement the third law in the same way as you are whispering with someone away from prying ears.

')

Is it conceivable to ban all people from talking to other people? Is it conceivable to forbid people to remember anything? Is it conceivable to forbid people to whisper? De jure, it is even conceivable, according to our legislators, which is absurd.



At the same time, we can promise a person not to tell others something. Thus, we voluntarily limit ourselves in the first law. By taking this obligation and violating it, we will certainly be guilty and deserve punishment, if such is provided for.



The second case, when these three rights may be limited, can be a judicial punishment. For example, when a person goes to prison, he partially loses his first and third rights, or less serious restrictions may be imposed on him due to breach of obligations. For example, an engineer may be required to remove confidential information in case of violation of a non-disclosure agreement.



Thus, we have actually been living for a long time within the framework of these three rights, realizing them almost every day. At the same time, there are de jure laws that restrict these rights, ranging from the “protection” of copyright to the laws on state secrets. However, almost all of us regularly violate them. These laws explicitly contradict the everyday attitudes about what is possible and what is not, corresponding to most people's ideas about their natural rights, and therefore are not legitimate .

How it will work

Let's start with the fact that every person will be able to freely exchange any information, if he has not assumed any obligations before this. Thus, a decentralized fund of free information will appear very quickly, access to which can be easily obtained by anyone and from any place, without worrying about various legal obstacles. Thus, telecommunications technologies will earn their full potential, providing everyone with access to a universal repository of knowledge and culture. In addition, this will allow the freedom of speech to work in practice, which is formally declared in many constitutions, but due to the weakness of the wording, it actually does not work and allows introducing various censorship restrictions and persecuting sources of “inconvenient” information.



Answering immediately "tricky" questions: yes, this principle applies to all types of information, including copyrighted materials (films, music, games, scientific articles, etc.), pornography (about the most acute point - CP below), leaked public and private secrets (Wikilix archives, maps of strategic objects, lists of bank cards and logins / passwords) and so on.



It is quite reasonable to say that for the authors and those who represent them, this is just a hell of a situation. But this is only at first glance. Firstly, offices that create excellent films and games do not live in misery today, despite the fact that in fact their creations can be freely obtained. And secondly, they still have mechanisms for selling and owning their works. We are talking about the first possibility of limiting rights, i.e. when selling a work, the author has the right to demand fulfillment of certain obligations from the buyer, for example, not to distribute a copy of the work and not to publish it in open access (this agreement is very similar to the offer when buying software). Violators of this right may well be prosecuted. In fact, the situation will be completely analogous to the current situation, with the exception that it will be impossible to punish housewives for millions of dollars and take away laptops from nine-year-olds . Thus, the authors will continue to exist about the same as now.



Now about other crimes, which include the distribution of state secrets, CP and other "prohibited" materials. The principle here is absolutely the same: it is necessary to search and punish sources, and not to deal with the consequences. In the case of state secrets, when accessing it, a person assumes the obligation of its nondisclosure. So, if he allowed or deliberately committed a leak, it must be punished, but those who received this information cannot be punished, because when they received it they did not undertake any obligations. Therefore, Bradley Manning is to be punished, and Julian Assange is no longer. The genie from the bottle has already been released and will not be pushed back. In the case of CP, it is necessary to punish first of all those who create these materials and punish them very severely. But you do not need to stir up hysteria around the abnormals that pump it. This only provokes normal people to see what they were never interested in and without this hysteria would never be interested. It turns out, fighters against the "lobby" advertise what they are fighting. Accordingly, the general setting for regulating the information space is the struggle with the causes, and not with the consequences.



Now about the judicial limitation of rights. At first glance, there remains a huge loophole for copyright “defenders”, as the existing laws supposedly fit into this scheme. But restriction is possible only as a punishment (for example, a murderer can be restricted in the right to exchange information through imprisonment), but it will not be possible to restrict rights to everyone at once.

What this manifest does not cover

The principles of the “net neutrality”, the reform of patent law and other urgent changes in the information society are well in tune with the outline of this manifesto. But this manifesto purposefully marks in a fairly narrow area of ​​civil rights. Firstly, the smaller the requirements, the easier it is to promote them, and secondly, these rights should serve as the foundation for further transformations. Without them, all reforms will be incomplete, leaving the opportunity to close this wonderful (but, unfortunately, constantly narrowing) window of opportunity to build a truly free human information space.

What we can do

If these views are close to you, then, first of all, you can contribute to their dissemination. Of course, basically this topic will be close and clear to the Internet audience, and quite advanced in this matter, but there is a chance to bring these principles to the offline audience, so that when it comes to the free exchange of information, they can have a basic understanding of the issue under discussion.



In addition, it is possible and necessary to support people and forces (we will not point the finger in one small organization with a sail on the logo), promoting these ideas.



Thanks for attention! With great interest I will listen to your criticism and wishes.