# propositional writing

# A Manifesto For The Use Of "Digital Freedoms" As A Catchphrase

Philip Dorrell, 20 January 2012

There's a war going on between copyright and freedom. One of the battles in the war is public debate about which matters more.

But I think too much of the debate starts with the concept of "copyright", and then maybe eventually gets around to talking about "freedom".

We need to start talking about "freedom" as the important thing, we need to consider which particular freedoms matter, and then we need to consider what that might tell us about how we should reform copyright and other forms of intellectual property (and also how we should limit the enforcement of intellectual property, if enforcement involves reductions in our freedoms).

To sum all that up in a single catchy catchphrase, I suggest: Digital Freedoms.

- "Pirate Party" is a negative name for a political party, and it suffers from being copyright-centric.

  A lot of what Pirate Parties believe in is about digital freedoms, but the name is firmly grounded in the concept of copyright. That is: "We are the copyright criminals", and presumably proud of it.

  This is rebellious, and it "sticks it to the man". For some people, that is enough, and they will support it.

  But there is a limit to how many people will be inspired to join a movement which says: "I'm a criminal, and I think we should all be criminals".

- It is better to be for freedom than against copyright.

  In the long run, as technology advances, being for freedom and being against copyright will be the same thing, because digital freedom will guarantee the unenforceability of copyright.

  But, in the short term, what we want is a commitment now from the general public about which thing matters more, so that when the conflict between the two becomes more obvious, we have, as a society, already made up our minds about the importance of keeping our digital freedoms.

  In other words, we don't want to argue: "We think copyright might conflict with digital freedom, so maybe we shouldn't have copyright".

  Instead we want to argue: "We think that digital freedom matters a lot, we want to legislate in favour of digital freedom right now, and if it turns out in the future that some other thing conflicts with digital freedom, digital freedom will be the thing that we choose to keep".

- An aside: "Digital Freedoms" is a slightly better catchphrase than "Digital Freedom".

  Just saying "freedom" is more catchy, or at least more dramatic, then saying "freedoms", with an "s". For example, the people's revolution doesn't say "We want freedoms!". It says "We want freedom!".

  However, the concept of "digital freedom" is rather general, vague and all encompassing.

  Also the distinctions between different kinds of digital freedom are rather technical. If we advocate for "Digital Freedom", which freedoms are included and which aren't? For example: Is it OK to hack into someone else's computer? (Probably no.) Is it OK to hack into your own computer? (I would say, and many would agree, yes.)

  The phrase "Digital Freedoms", with the extra "s", suggests the existence of some set of freedoms which can be listed.

  We can resolve questions about what is to be included and what is not to be included by actually writing that list down.

  For example, see this list which I have previously compiled as a list of freedoms which are important and which are also in conflict with effective copyright enforcement, and which might form the basis of an initial list of digital freedoms to be included in a manifesto.

- A list of digital freedoms would form the major part of a "Digital Freedoms Manifesto".

  The manifesto would list the freedoms, and for each freedom, it would say:

  - What the freedom is.
  - Why the freedom is important.
  - What reasons other people might have for disallowing that freedom, and why those reasons are not sufficient reasons to do that.

  And finally ...

- "Digital Freedoms Party" would be a good name for a political party.

  "Digital Freedoms" tells us that there are certain digital freedoms which are important to society.

  That is the thing that we want people to think about.

  We also want people to think about how digital freedoms support other good things, like sharing, open collaboration and political transparency.

  Basing a political party on the concept of "Digital Freedoms" avoids the need for a name which is copyright-centric.

  However, the Digital Freedoms Party will still need to address the issue of copyright versus freedom, and I would suggest a policy on copyright which says something like:

  - Copyright can be a good thing, and has perhaps served society well in the past.
  - But now we live in a digital world.
  - There exist certain digital freedoms which are a good thing to have.
  - Actions taken to enforce copyright are unacceptable if they reduce those digital freedoms.
  - If that means that we have to have less copyright, or copyright less perfectly enforced, then so be it.

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This manifesto is a Propositional Manifesto. It is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike license.