I wasn’t referring to any item in particular. I merely think an awareness that we don’t live in a perfect world shouldn’t stop us from aiming to accomplish as much as we can in this area.

Tell me how to reconcile #9 with the others.

What’s more, the line of demarcation between where one person’s rights ends and another one’s begins is only clear in simple cases, like in the analogies that sprinkle Internet posts. Child sacrifice is one of those simplified cases. Real cases of religious freedom are seldom that cut and dried.

Today I saw a report that the WHO just released a study that says deisel exhast is more carcinogenic than second-hand tobacco smoke, so when the new Volvo diesel hybrids come out, will it be your right to buy it, or my right to avoid the miniscule risk of cancer that your car may pose to me?

In a world as crowded and interconnected as today’s world, the “my rights/your rights” rhetoric may be true and satisfying, but it’s not practical. So, let’s say you can’t by the Volvo. Well, if you start pumping out more CO2 that starts affecting the ability of Innuit people to live their chosen traditional lifestyle, owing to the vanishing of the ice. Ad infinitum, ad absurdum.

Life and rights will always be messy, which is why we just have to keep doing the best we can. The proposed Internet Bill of Rights is a valiant effort, but it misses all of the messiness that characterizes real life.

Most of the conflicts I see happen anywhere arise just where the (reasonably claimed) rights of two groups overlap- in many of those cases there is simply no solution that doesn’t make a value judgment as to whose rights take priority.

#1 through #9 are all about maintaining individual freedom and the ability of people to do things.

#10 is about stopping other people from doing things.

I’m not saying that benefitting from what you create is bad.  However, I think that FDRs “four freedoms” (only two of which are actually about liberty) made a mistake of trying to cast everything that was desirable as a freedom, and this makes the same mistake.  It undermines #1 through #9.

Freedom of religion, like other rights, is limited to the individual. Your right to such freedom ends where someone else’s rights begin. People have the right to life, including children.

But good luck with publicly funded projects that compete with the mega corps already in place… 

also, the full text of #10 is:

“10. Property – digital citizens have a right to benefit from what they create, and be secure in their intellectual property on the internet”

I think, for example, that the right to privacy on the internet is a great thing, but even if something like this were ensconced in law, until “privacy” is interpreted in case law, it’s more of a feel-good thing than anything actionable.

I guess what I’m saying is: our rights change day to day even when the law doesn’t, so we must be ever vigilant.