Today we launch a new blog at Mozilla, focused on public policy issues that affect the open Internet.
For years, we’ve worked closely with a broad swath of the Internet community on privacy, and built a strong reputation in that space. Our public policy efforts also encompass a broader range of issues, in addition to privacy policy, that advance the open, innovative, user-centric Internet. We’re engaging actively in a number of different forums, including:
- With the FCC and Congress on net neutrality;
- With civil society, industry, and the U.S. government on cybersecurity;
- With the European Commission on competition policy and data protection;
- In South America on civil rights online;
- At the Internet Governance Forum and other international venues on Internet governance; and
- With a global, diverse range of stakeholders on copyright and patent issues.
Mozilla brings a unique voice to open Internet advocacy. Our products, such as the Firefox browser and Firefox OS, have half a billion users and compete toe-to-toe with the world’s largest and wealthiest tech companies, and break new ground in engineering innovation and invention. At the same time, Mozilla is a principle-over-profit organization, where both public policy and product decisions are made with only our users in mind, in sync with advancing our mission. Perhaps most importantly, though, we are a community, seeking out and incorporating input and collaborations from contributors around the world who share our vision.
We hope to bring Mozilla’s unique voice to more public policy conversations in 2014, to help preserve and advance the open, user-centered, small-d democratic, free (as in speech) Internet, so that its benefits can be realized around the world.
With that in mind, we are launching this blog to share updates on our work and on the dynamic context of open Internet policy. Last week’s court decision on net neutrality in the U.S. makes this launch particularly timely.
If you want to join us, keep your eyes open for opportunities to join Mozilla and friends campaigns, like StopWatching.Us.
Want to contribute more? Great! You can file a bug with suggestions, join the Mozillians community and its policy group, or check out our Internet Policy wiki page.
M. Chris Riley