Constitutional Amendment on Internet Freedom

[Commentary] It's time we added the first 21st Century amendment to the Constitution -- an amendment that parallels the First Amendment but explicitly prohibits the government from ever shutting down the Internet.

Freedom of the Internet in today's world is just as important as freedom of the press, religion or speech. As revolutions spread around the world questioning dictator after dictator, it is clear that the Internet has been the same kind of catalyst that a free press has been in past democratic revolutions -- it has given people an easy way to share their experiences, a tool for organizing, and served to publish atrocities in cases where the press was blocked. Anything as powerful as the Internet is something that governments irresistibly will try to control over time -- they are at the heart of our communications here and abroad. We have urged others to say hands off -- how about committing the US to the same position for the next 200 years in the only ironclad way we have -- a 21st Century Constitutional Amendment on Freedom of the Internet.