de:Freie Informationsinfrastruktur

A mainly European term mirroring the official US term National Information Infrastructure, introduced in early nineties by a US Patent Office paper [1] (http://www.uspto.gov/web/offices/com/doc/ipnii/).

The terms global information infrastructure and information highway were also used as a governmental term for the Net.

Free Information Infrastructure rather focuses on freedom and is widely used by open standards lobby groups in Europe.

Free Information Infrastructure focuses on the Internet. The Internet and the media that is used to access the net shall be free.

A Free Information Infrastructure comprises

• No software patents, no patents for eCommerce and data processing.
• Free access, free contribution
• open standards
• little control by state
• Free Speech
• strong competition law
• sometimes: Free/Libre (Open Source) Software

Some groups such as Eurolinux and FFII refer to it.