Susan Crawford has posted an attempt at defining some principles for guidiing the inhabitants of the "online community".

Online Principles

1. Human beings are naturally inclined towards trust and collaboration. Policies of intermediaries or governments that frustrate trust and collaboration should be viewed with suspicion.

2. The world is a complex and diverse place. Conflicting values can coexist online. Policies of intermediaries or governments that attempt to impose unitary values -- and, in particular, that attempt to build such values into low levels of the protocol stack -- should be viewed with suspicion.

3. Any group or government that attempts to impose its values online on another group or government should be viewed with suspicion.

4. As much as possible, decisions about what should happen online should be implemented at the edge of the network.

5. As much as possible, decisions about what individuals should be able to do online should be made by those individuals themselves.

6. Netizens want to widen their contacts with people who are distant from them in time and space. Policies of intermediaries or governments that frustrate this contact should be viewed with suspicion.

7. Any machine or device should be allowed to connect to the internet as long as it respects basic protocols. Policies of intermediaries or governments that frustrate this connection should be viewed with suspicion.

8. Online access should not be conditioned on provision of government-mandated identifying information.

9. Individuals should have a choice of modes of online access available to them, at reasonable prices. One of those choices must allow individuals to host content themselves.

10. Individuals who subscribe to these principles should be ready to act collectively when necessary.

The concepts of de-centralisation, suspicion of imposed authority, and valuing diversity of opinion and values is laudable, but I think some focus needs to be placed on the commercial imperitive which increasingly controls the ability of the individuals to access the online community.