Free speech activists, web site owners, internet users, and even some celebrities, have banded together in support of the Declaration of Internet Freedom. The petition calls for free and open access to the web from around the world. To help get a grasp on what it's all about, we've asked an activist from the Electronic Frontier Foundation (one of the declaration's many supporters) to answer your questions.


You can take a look at the full text of the act right now, and it boils down to five principles:

Expression: Don't censor the Internet. Access: Promote universal access to fast and affordable networks. Openness: Keep the Internet an open network where everyone is free to connect, communicate, write, read, watch, speak, listen, learn, create and innovate. Innovation: Protect the freedom to innovate and create without permission. Don't block new technologies, and don't punish innovators for their users' actions. Privacy: Protect privacy and defend everyone's ability to control how their data and devices are used.


Right now, the purpose of the declaration is to get people talking. The sponsors are encouraging people to remix, edit, and change it however they see fit. You can think of it as an open-source version of a declaration at this point, with the hope that it will draw attention to the importance of the principles outlined in it.

With that in mind, we thought it'd be a good idea to bring in EFF activist Trevor Timm to help answer your questions about the declaration and its principles.

Trevor will be here in the discussion below this post today between 10 am PST (1 pm EST) and 10:45 am PST (2:45 pm EST) to answer your questions. If you want to start posting questions now to get the conversation started, please do, and he'll answer as many as he can when he's in.