Hi Rebecca,

I apologize for not having participated in this forum as much as I 
should but I have a few thoughts as to WHY there should be Internet 
rights in the first place. I just thought I'd throw these ideas out into 
this email list and see how it evolves.

What is it that makes humans different than other animals? Is it the 
opposing thumb? No - because various other primates have better thumbs 
than we do. Is it the size of our brains? That's a factor. But in cases 
where human children are raise by animals the child doesn't usually 
develop much beyond the animal it is raised by. Getting to the point - 
what makes us different is out ability to share knowledge and 
information. Language, communication, and information storage.

In the Church of Reality we have a concept called the Tree of Knowledge 
which is the sum total of human understanding. We are all part of 
societies and we are in fact more connected to each other than bees in a 
bee hive. If you look around at what's around you, your desk, your 
computer, your home, car, furniture, tools, roads, planes, cell phones, 
etc. all of this made by other people in an orderly society that all 
shares a technological infrastructure that we are all totally dependent 
upon.

It started with spoken language where primitive human learned to share 
knowledge. Thus an individual who figured out something new could share 
that with others and that enhanced their mutual survival. Once something 
was invented it became part of human society. Thus the thoughts of "the 
guy who invented the wheel" are still with us.

As human evolved we invested written languages. Writing enhanced the 
storage and communication of ideas. An individual can communicate with 
outher who are not in the same place at the same time. The written word 
was more stable than biological memory and the communication loses when 
something is told from one person to the next. Thus writing became a 
major advance in human evolution.

In the last 200 years humans have made major evolutionary steps. We now 
live twice as long as we did 200 years ago. We can fly through the air, 
yet we didn't evolve wings. We can communicate with people on the other 
side of the planet, yet we didn't evolve telepathy. Physically we are 
almost identical to humans 200 years ago but when you look at us today, 
everything is far more advanced. What changed?

What changed is our Tree of Knowledge. We have new technology and new 
ways of storing information and communicating. We have the telephone 
that goves the spoken word more reach. With television and radio and 
amplified sound a person can talk to millions of people at once. The 
printing press enhanced the written word as books become cheap and easy 
to distribute and available to a high percentage of literate people. The 
better information can be shared the better human minds can link 
together to communicate and invent new things.

Then came the computer, a machine we created that helps us think. No 
longer are we limited to our biological brains when we can create a 
thought process and let the machine use it's speed and accuracy to do 
calculations in seconds that would take us millions of years to do with 
a meat brain.

And then came the Internet, which is the biggest advance in human 
evolution since language. The Internet opens the floodgates allowing any 
person to communicate and work with any other person on the planet. We 
can share pictures, videos, software, ideas, and throw it out there for 
everyone to work on collectively. This invitation to work together on a 
wiki is an example of what the Internet can do.

Although we as humans are individuals, we are also much more than the 
sum of the people. Are are as if we are a single mind, a combined 
conscience working together to understand who we are as a planet and 
what our future should be. The Internet is to our minds what roads are 
to cars. It is the infrastructure of human communication. And in the 
future every person on the planet will be connect through it. It is as 
necessary to our future as food, water, or air.

The most personal thing about us is our thoughts. What is in our brain. 
But my brain is not limited to my meat. It includes my computer and that 
which I have online. It is my connection to the Tree of Knowledge which 
includes everyone. After the meat dies my thoughts will live on in the 
reality based world online and I will achieve a small level of 
immortality if people are still using any of the ideas I come up with 
that are worth remembering. This document "Charter of Human Rights and 
Principles on the Internet" exists or will son exist in the Tree of 
Knowledge and will be part of the software that governs how we as humans 
will share information and what we will evolve into.

Anyhow - some of what I wrote here might form a basis for a preamble to 
create an overall vision as to why there should be Internet rights in 
the first place and to create a reality based set of values that will 
guide us as to determining what is right and wrong as we progress with 
our work here.

My 2 cents ...