This diversity of thought and contribution resulted in a number of potential roadblocks over specific policies and even the definition of terms — even net neutrality failed to gain consensus as a phrase and a concept. So rather than allowing themselves to get mired in endless policy discussions — presumably a job for, say, Congress — the group agreed to think more broadly and to find common ground. Masnick says that "we realized that for this to be a really valuable document, it had to focus on those core principles, and different groups could build out what those meant from a policy perspective later." Ohanian agrees, saying that "there are a bunch of different ways to address this from a policy standpoint," and that given a modest number of policy experts in the group, "they said let’s agree on the basic principles, and then if we can agree with that we can move to talk about policy."

That might sound like a cop-out from having to deal with the difficult work of policy, but Masnick says that the decision was also partly practical, and that "keeping things simple and straightforward just seemed like a more useful way to get these ideas across and accepted."

The simplicity shows: the final version of the Declaration includes just five principles and 104 words. Phrases like "net neutrality" and "patent reform" are absent. Instead, there are words like "expression, access, openness, innovation, and privacy" — Levy says the language is at a "higher level" than policy, though that characterization is semantically troubling considering that principles are just the starting point. The details of policy are more difficult to work out, and are arguably more important. Congress can’t realistically pass a law that says "don’t censor the internet." (Though we’re entertained by the idea of the Supreme Court referring to such a law in an opinion.) You and I may agree that free speech is an excellent idea, but it’s an incomplete one: over 200 years of First Amendment law and policy has moved us only a few strides down the path of reconciling the facts of daily life with our ethical aspirations, and the internet changes things entirely. Still, policy has to start somewhere, and consensus is a good place to begin.

As of its public debut on Monday, July 2nd, over sixty organizations and thought leaders have signed their names in support of the document. And while corporations like Google and Wikipedia — which each opposed SOPA — are curiously absent from the list of signatories, Ohanian says that’s simply by design: he says that no effort was really made to involve those organizations, partly due to the fact that their bureaucracies were not likely to accommodate the group’s timeframe. He adds that "we wanted to have a place to have corporations signing on, but the lesson from all of this is that the internet is ours: it belongs to the public, and the individual."