RESPECTONOMY - The need of decentralization

FREEDOM OF INFORMATION

Respectonomy
5 min readJan 18, 2017

Freedom of speech is the right to articulate one’s opinions and ideas without fear of government retaliation or cencorship, or societal sanction. The term freedom of expression is sometimes used synonymously, but includes any act seeking, receiving and imparting information or ideas, regardless of the medium used.

Jo Glanville, editor of the Index on Censorship, states that “the Internet has been a revolution for censorship as much as for free speech”. International, national, and regional standards recognise that freedom of speech, as one form of freedom of expression, applies to any medium, including the Internet. The Communications Decency Act (CDA) of 1996 was the first major attempt by the United States Congress to regulate explict material on the Internet. In 1997, in the landmark cyberlaw case of Reno v. ACLU, the U.S. Supreme Court partially overturned the law.Judge Stewart R. Dalzell, one of the three federal judges who in June 1996 declared parts of the CDA unconstitutional, in his opinion stated the following:

The Internet is a far more speech-enhancing medium than print, the village green, or the mails. Some of the dialogue on the Internet surely tests the limits of conventional discourse. Speech on the Internet can be unfiltered, unpolished, and unconventional, even emotionally charged, and vulgar — in a word, “indecent” in many communities. But we should expect such speech to occur in a medium in which citizens from all walks of life have a voice. We should also protect the autonomy that such a medium confers to ordinary people as well as media magnates, but as one of the plaintiff’s experts put it with such resonance at the hearing: “What achieved success was the very chaos that the Internet is. The strength of the Internet is chaos.” Just as the strength of the Internet is chaos, so that strength of our liberty depends upon the chaos and cacophony of the unfettered speech the First Amendment protects.

The World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) Declaration of Principles adopted in 2003 makes specific reference to the importance of the right to freedom of expression for the “Information Society” in stating:

We reaffirm, as an essential foundation of the Information society, and as outlined in Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, that everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; that this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers. Communication is a fundamental social process, a basic human need and the foundation of all social organisation. It is central to the Information Society. Everyone, everywhere should have the opportunity to participate and no one should be excluded from the benefits of the Information Society offers.

In Evelyn Beatrice Hall’s biography of Voltaire, she coined the following sentence to illustrate Voltaire’s beliefs: I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it. Hall’s quote is frequently cited to describe the principle of freedom of speech.

In the 20th Century, Noam Chomsky states that: “If you believe in freedom of speech, you should also believe in freedom of speech for views you don’t like. Stalin and Hitler, for example, were dictators in favor of freedom of speech for views they liked only. If you’re in favor of freedom of speech, that means you’re in favor of freedom of speech precisely for views you despise.

As due to my governing bodies freedom to express your view or thoughts were mostly dependent on values and ethics of the human behaviour which should hurt anyone. This clearly restricts the view of any person as if its hurting anyone, peron might be charged with penalties which is set by governing authorities.

Eventually there came many ways for people to express their thoughts such a Books, Articles, Blogging etc. but all faced censorship in some form or the other. Different governing authorities impose laws on publishing or from the platform on which it is shared. Different countries with different laws is the biggest barrier that gives a limited audience to the content creator.

Out of this, Blogging on Internet gave us a platform where the user has freedom to share information on some centralized server. Every half a second someone in the world is creating content. The internet is being used by people from every demographic you can imagine. Blogs have become a creative outlet to content creators. Think of blogs as a personal website that is easy to manage and data that is ordered reverse chronologically, i.e. latest data first. They have influenced media coverage and has facilitated exchange of information between people having the same interests. Blogging has increased the interest of academics who look to study human behavior through expression.

Blogging did face many issues such censorship and centralized authorization. The real rewards for good blogs start after the traffic on the blog increases. Blogs come up with too many ads and spams from third parties which annoys the reader. But if there is no ads on blogs, then how will the content creator will be paid? As of now what content creators earn is the one third of the actual amount spent by the advertisment agecy. So where does the remaining amount go? The content which is shared on server is prone to data loss and expenses to create or maintain domains to publish any content can be a burden to the content creator.

Don’t you wish to have a platform where you have full freedom to exchage information with no middle man? A decentralised platform where users have full right to express views without any ads or spam. A decentralized platform where the content creator is rewarded directly from the cotent consumer for its good content without any censorship. A platform which is run by users not by any centralized server without any fear of data loss. Is it possible to have such a Decentralized Autonomous system where content creators or consumers can interact with each other?

Yes! Respectonomy aims to build such a platform where content creators and consumers have the freedom to read and share information without any ads, spam, trolling, or censorship. A social network with only content and no distractions. A platform to share your thoughts, ideas and information and get paid for it!

For more details please visit our Website- https://respectonomy.com

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