Marvin Ammori

Andy Schwartzman headed Media Access Project for many years and is considered an elder statesman of public interest lawyers in the tech, media, and telecom space.

Each day, Andy sends a Daily Item–something that you may have missed in the many Twitter feeds, Facebook posts, and newspapers sending inundating you with information. Andy picks out just one thing you might have missed and shouldn’t have–and it’s one of our daily reads here at the Ammori blog.

Today’s Daily Item is Marvin’s Wired article proposing an Internet Freedom Day, a new holiday to celebrate the many ways we use the Internet, and commemorate the one-year anniversary of the SOPA Blackout.

Below is an excerpt from the Wired article:

The Internet Deserves Its Own Holiday

       Every so often in human history, something new comes along that warrants a celebration, and that deserves its own holiday. That’s why I propose we celebrate “Internet Freedom Day” later this month.

       We already know there’s pent-up demand for holidays, typified by the number of official – and unofficial – holidays out there. Take Super Bowl Sunday, which is more widely celebrated than most official holidays. Take Black Friday, our post-holiday celebration of another contact sport, of sorts: shopping. Take April Fool’s Day, a celebration of pranks and human gullibility. And then there’s Pi Day (March 14, or 3.14 – get it?), a celebration of circumferences, math, and store-bought cherry pie.

        So it’s shocking that we don’t already have an unofficial Internet Freedom Day, or even an official holiday like we do for the Fourth of July, given that the internet is one of the most revolutionary technologies the world has ever known. It has given us an entire universe of information in our pockets. It may connect us to spammers in Nigeria and cat videos, but it also connects us to our loved ones and people we only know from Twitter.

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