[numeromancer]

I would gladly sign a document that had an exhaustive and exclusive list of declarations of what we weren't going to allow governments to do. We implicitly give governments the rights to the use of force, and governments, like people (to whom we don't give such rights) will, in time, see any lack of interdiction as an implicit approval.

And positive rights, such as declaring that “all shall be provided, gratis, access to the internet”, have an implicit coercion in them; someone must be forced to provide it.

[Gormo]

> I would gladly sign a document that had an exhaustive and exclusive list of declarations of what we weren't going to allow governments to do.

We've got one of those already. It doesn't work as well as it was intended to, because, despite the idealistic "rule of law, not men" rhetoric, laws are just abstract concepts, and the world is always under the control of people, who will game and manipulate any system of rules to their advantage. If you build an institution and give it enough power, the people who run it will eventually find a way around their constraints.