Overview

The world has problems that are much more urgent than internet policy: climate change, inequality, issues of race, gender and gender identity, and more. The internet is less important than all of these battles! But the internet is where we will have these battles – it’s the terrain on
which we fight. It’s not what we fight FOR, but it’s what we fight WITH.

That is why it’s crucial to keep the internet free, fair and open, and to claw back the reversals we’ve faced on all three of these fronts. As the internet permeates more and more fields of endeavour, more and more power blocs see some advantage in selectively breaking the internet to
make their jobs easier. Whether it’s copyright, national security, law enforcement, or policing hate speech, there’s an ever-expanding constellation of people who are indifferent to the impact on all the other uses of the internet and myopically focused on solving the problems the internet creates in their parochial corner of the world.

Objective

To turn the conference attendees into a relentless army of internet freedom fighters who will destroy the careers of any politician who recklessly endangers the freeness, fairness and openness of the internet to please an industry or its lobbyists.

Target Audience

All conference attendees.

Five Things Audience Members Will Learn

1. How the nervous system of the twenty first century came to be governed by a body of law designed to regulate the entertainment industry
2. How the unintended consequence of this absurd situation is the end of private property and a new kind of digitally supercharged feudalism
3. How the dismantling of antitrust law led to the growth of Big Tech
4. How the internet’s amazing capabilities misleads people into thinking it’s capable of anything
5. How the internet’s true revolutionary potential is in its ability to help form groups and coordinate collective action