Mobile Declaration of Independence: The Charges
As previously noted, the American Declaration of Independence is largely a collection of charges against the King of Great Britain, justifying dissolution of the political bonds between Britain and the 13 American colonies. In that original post, I challenged us to develop a Mobile Declaration of Independence and to do so by August 2.
Last week, I proposed that our new Mobile Declaration of Independence focus on freedom from the oppression which I coined as “Big Bell Dogma.”
This week, I’d like to focus on the list of charges to be brought against this oppressor in justifying our claim of independence.
Depending on how you count them, the original Declaration included somewhere between 18 and 27 charges. By my quick analysis, they are grouped into roughly six categories:
- Refusal to pass new laws
- Lack of representation by legislature
- Blocked immigration
- Obstruction of justice
- Harrassment by officers and soldiers
- Waging a brutal war against the citizens of the American colonies
Rather than listing specific offenses of the “Big Bell Dogma” (since each of us could probably develop our own lengthy, but unique list), I propose that we list the broad categories of offenses. Here are the ones I propose:
- Limiting products so that they can only operate in a few fixed locations (”where they have always operated”).
- Forcing services to only be offered in a constrained set of fixed locations (”where they have always been offered”).
- Locking processes to only work in a relatively small number of places (”where they have always been performed”).
- Forbiding (by law or policy) constituents from adopting otherwise viable and available mobile products, services, and technologies.
- example: Cambodia bans 3G networks
- example: Pennsylvania law banning city-wide WiFi networks
- example: Company policies
- Disabling or blocking technologies that otherwise would enable the power of mobility.
- example: Radio wave blocking paint
- example: Electronic jammers
- Taxing or otherwise penalizing mobile products and services so as to destroy the financial value of adopting them.
- example: US cellphone taxes
- Charging mobile products, services, and technologies with pretended offenses so as to encourage fear, uncertainty, and doubt amongst those who otherwise would adopt and enjoy the power of mobility.
What do you think? Does this cover the types of offenses by the “Big Bell Dogma” against mobility against which we must declare our freedom?
July 16th, 2008 at 3:13 pm
[...] Senators have proposed the Mobile Wireless Tax Fairness Act of 2008. This bill recognizes the Big Bell Dogma efforts to slow mobile adoption through burdensome taxation. Internet tax moratoriums have been [...]