Toward a Technology Bill of Rights

It's time to update an old idea: The Technology Bill of Rights -- new rights for a new era

A few hundred years ago, the world was a vastly different place by just about any measure. In fact, it was 220 years ago this year that the Bill of Rights was first introduced in order to explicitly lay out the rights of the people in the brand-new democracy of the United States of America. We're all well versed in the Bill of Rights (or at least we should be), and it forms much of the basis of modern law. The impetus for the creation of the Bill of Rights was the tyranny of the rulers in Britain and its effect on the colonies. As with much of human history, it takes a significant problem to cause the creation of a significant change to society. We may be nearing that point right now, and the time may soon be right for another Bill of Rights -- one centered around technology.

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Here are a few potential elements of a Technology Bill of Rights:

Article 1. Any individual shall be able to choose anonymity when posting to Internet sites
The fact that many open comment pages rapidly fall into a cesspool of human waste is not lost on anyone. It's a sad commentary on the state of our society, but it also brings this problem into the light -- you may not know you had termites unless you looked, for instance. But the fact that a few people consistently pee in the pool doesn't mean that everyone else must suffer. Anonymity on the Internet is very important part of the Internet subculture. Yes, it's likely that discourse would improve if every post written on a message board had the author's real name attached, but there would be far fewer comments, and Internet communities would languish. 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.