Re: [GNU/consensus] [RFC][SH] User Data Manifesto

[carlo von lynX]

Hello Melvin!

On Sun, Nov 15, 2015 at 11:34:02PM +0100, Melvin Carvalho wrote:
> UDM 2.0 is a good start but it doesnt address the basic issues that we
> have.  ie we dont have data freedom, in a practical sense.  Even those
> loving free software are not always offering data freedom.  Often we dont
> know what it means, so let's teach people.

There is a philosophical worry that has been nagging me for some months
now concerning "freedom" in the sense of democracy and constitutions.
It is neither the freedom of software nor the freedom of data. True
freedom is the ability to walk in a park at night and expect not to be
robbed or stabbed to death. It is the freedom to feel safe that others
will not harm me because it is unreasonably dangerous for them to do so.

I am afraid with ideologies like freedom of software and data we missed
the point. Both have been used against us as citizen of a digitized
world. Think of GNU/Linux enabling bulk surveillance in smartphones, or
simply empowering the Google cloud. Think of the content and social graph
of Twitter and Facebook enabling atrocious forms of destruction of our
constitutional ability to form a political opinion such as KARMA POLICE
and JTRIG. Just look at the Falklands incident of 2008 reported recently
by theintercept.

Is "free data" and "free software" a similarly wrong ideology as the
"free market" ? Giving freedom to the capital rather than the human?

I know that the GPL provides a ton of securities for the users, so I am
not specifically talking about the FSF. Just about the word "free" in
the context of manifestos and such.

Best regards, Carlo.


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