I think the time has come for a constitutional amendment adding freedom of the web to our existing first amendment rights.
My immediate reason for this came from the mess last week when Gmail went down:
As most of those affected by the Gmail outage return to their inboxes, a lingering sense of unease remains for users feeling neglected by Google, or fearful for the safety of their future data.
We are all more dependent on email than we were in the recent era of paper mail and telephones. All sorts of communications, including legal commitments, are made by email. Yet, the laws surrounding email are still very unclear.
Click Me for full story at Huffington Post
The obvious issues have to do with privacy. There are, however, also issues about the responsibilities of email providers. The battle between GMail and more traditional fee for service email providers is still heating up. If email is free, why should Washington State pay for mail using the gov or edu addresses? On the other hand if email is “free,” what is the culpability of a supplier when their system goes down? If email is as universal a need as electricity, then shouldn’t providers be required to assure thie3r services to all and do so at a low price?
The flip side of these questions is that a universal information service changes traditional ideas about how we communicate with one another. Before the printing press, free speech was pretty much limited to audio. The invention of the printing press led to laws protecting the right to print and read what was printed. We all accept the the right to a free press. Shouldn’t the wenb be treated the same way?
Email is a special case because it is can be as personal as pillow talk or as heated as an argument in a pub. Maybe worst of all, I worry that email s becoming tightly tied to surveillance .. whether that is surveillance by Big Brother or surveillance by Corporate America.
All of this leads me to a topic I intend to revisit on the Ave … we need a right, a CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHT to web freedoms. … the right of privacy, the right of free speech, and the right of open access to information.
More to come.