Netpolicy

Public Policy Module

Purpose

What's Mozilla's Role in public policy? The Web serves as the central connection mechanism for the whole world – not just the privileged or the educated classes, but truly the entire world. The next 2.5 billion people will be coming online in this decade, and we will all receive tremendous benefits by keeping that connection open and secure.

Mozilla believes the Web should be open and available to everyone, and this openness is essential to a healthy cyber economy. We focus on advancing key characteristics of the open Web, not specific functions like social media or videos, which will always be in flux.

The strength of the Web and its economy rests on a number of core building blocks that make up its foundational DNA. Think of them as requirements to support a full range of social, business, governmental, and educational interactions and communications that underlie the importance of the Web in our lives today.

When these building blocks are threatened, the overall health and well-being of the Web are put at risk. For instance, recent attempts to change copyright through SOPA in the US and ACTA around the world undermine the distributed nature of the Web, its interoperability, security, and ultimately the rights of users themselves. Another example is attempts by network operators to block, degrade or discriminate the flow of data across their systems, which threaten to restrict access to the Web and degrade the resilience of the Internet for millions of users.

In terms of regulating the Web, the primary challenge for any legislative process is anticipating unintended consequences, given the complexities inherent in the Web, its architecture, the relationships between its many stakeholders and the pace of innovation.

The Mozilla Public Policy Module works with our community of users and developers to provide products and services that make the Web more robust, and take action when the Web’s DNA is threatened. We want to empower anyone to become a steward of the healthy Web and ensure its open characteristics remain intact for the next 2.5 billion people.

So what do we do? We engage in public affairs matters when Mozilla can make a difference by both advancing and defending the web

   ... without compromising core code efforts
   ... when we can add differential value
   ... directly or indirectly

Meetings and Mailing Lists

Public mailing list is here: https://mail.mozilla.org/listinfo/netpolicy