Maybe make it more useful by providing a set of DNS lookups for major sites? Since SOPA tries to compromise DNS it would be useful to evolve a decentralized variant.
Yes, and no. Like someone mentioned humans.txt has an addon. Similarly, you can have one for freedom.txt. Its not to protest a bill, or to think that we are making a change. But to clarify our stance. This isnt activism, but saying that your online identity supports free/uncensored internet.
That may be true, but if there is to be a real Computer Programmers' Guild, it will be born out of these sorts of gimmicks. Just something to consider.
This is nice and all but I don't think anyone is going to go to websites and type /freedom.txt to see if it has it. It's much like the humans.txt file. No one actually reads these things.
For the humans.txt, there is an add-on for Chrome that let's you see very easily when a website has one. I do read them when I see one especially if it's a site that I go to often.
I love the idea, but the writing leaves something to be desired; swipes at governments and corporations distract from the message. I think short and sweet is the way to go:
"My name is ____ and I own this website. I staunchly oppose any interference with the internet's ability to connect people and share knowledge. The power to silence this website or any other violates a fundamental human right to free speech, and I vigorously oppose any such action, law, or policy."
On the surface, I admit this seems like an empty gesture. If it catches on, though, it could carry a few advantages: free speech advocates can cite how many domains oppose a given bill, and we can start pushing politicians and corporations to put this on their own sites to publicly display their commitment.
> An open internet is more important than security, copyright infringement, terrorism or child pornography.
I'm not sure this sentence does what you want it to do. It implies these things are all a similar level of evil, and it makes it easy for any reader to dismiss the entire text.
How can you in one post extoll a free/open internet, and after it post links to nonfree sites like Twitter, Facebook, and Google+? Start walking the walk.
Included is a Python script which automatically generates a freedom.txt file.
Please feel free to send pull requests. Add a separate line on locations.txt with your freedom.txt address and the script will automatically output it!
Open internet is about choice. You can choose to declare your name, or not, like today. You can put your name in freedom.txt or not. But if its not an open internet, perhaps you will be forced to.
