A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace (projects.eff.org)

Unfortunately, if history of human species is any indication, only War makes Declaration matter.

Hard to believe this is nearly 20 years old. I remember reading about it in Wired magazine when it first came out. (This is when Wired was worth reading, which was also a long time ago.)

Unfortunately it hasn't aged well, not least in that seeing that a manifesto was issued from Davos puts a very different spin on it today than it did back then.

> Cyberspace does not lie within your borders. Do not think that you can build it, as though it were a public construction project. You cannot.

You can, however, regulate it as a Title II utility. That's ok.

lofty thoughts but really impractical. Look, gov'ts will always need to be part of the conversation.

What blather. Cyberspace is just a way for people to communicate--flesh and bone people who live and work in cities of concrete and steel, and are bound to each other by social compacts that encompass both the tangible and intangible. The subjects of cyberspace are "transactions" and "relationships" and "thoughts"--but those transactions overwhelmingly pertain to tangible things, those relationships are between physical people, and those thoughts are overwhelmingly about things that exist in the real world.

To the extent that the institutions of the corporeal world regulate cyberspace, they do so to protect real-world people. The abused child depicted in pornography, the artist who converted chemical fuel into a creative work, the consumer that purchased a physical product. Real-world harms don't become not-real simply because they are transacted through a digital medium.

Of course, to the extent that activities in Cyberspace cannot impinge on the real world, then institutions should not regulate, but that reduces simply to an argument for free speech.

"How many divisions has [cyberspace]?"

Random trivia of the day...this guy (John Perry Barlow) also wrote Grateful Dead lyrics. He primarily collaborated w/ Bob Weir.

Another artifact of this time is Rushkoff's book Cyberia. It didn't age well either, but it informs an understanding of the time.

(1996)

soooooo, the way i see it, imho, is that any government which derives its authority from the governed is inseparable from the governed. i.e. government = proper subset of governed. either cyberspace is lawless (and might makes right) or there is some form of law, thus some form of governance, and thus a government. again inmho, a government of and by the people is better than, say, fascism. until we've evolved to the state of Zee Prime, cyberspace will continue to exist in that most primitive of mediums, atomic matter, and so must share the domain of nation states and such. look at me now, blathering on as much as this article. all i was trying to say is, given that cyberspace is pervasive throughout the political structures of our earth, maybe we should productively engage rather than hostilely withdrawal. that, and Jefferson was able to eloquently express his deep understanding of governance through his pen while still clearly shouting, "leave us the f-ck alone or expect a fight you english b-stards." you just new he meant it.

For context this was written during the height of the first war on encryption.

Date: Fri, 9 Feb 1996 17:16:35 +0100 To: barlow@eff.org From: John Perry Barlow Subject: A Cyberspace Independence Declaration

Yesterday, that great invertebrate in the White House signed into the law the Telecom "Reform" Act of 1996, while Tipper Gore took digital photographs of the proceedings to be included in a book called "24 Hours in Cyberspace."

I had also been asked to participate in the creation of this book by writing something appropriate to the moment. Given the atrocity that this legislation would seek to inflict on the Net, I decided it was as good a time as any to dump some tea in the virtual harbor.

After all, the Telecom "Reform" Act, passed in the Senate with only 5 dissenting votes, makes it unlawful, and punishable by a $250,000 to say "shit" online. Or, for that matter, to say any of the other 7 dirty words prohibited in broadcast media. Or to discuss abortion openly. Or to talk about any bodily function in any but the most clinical terms.

It attempts to place more restrictive constraints on the conversation in Cyberspace than presently exist in the Senate cafeteria, where I have dined and heard colorful indecencies spoken by United States senators on every occasion I did.

This bill was enacted upon us by people who haven't the slightest idea who we are or where our conversation is being conducted. It is, as my good friend and Wired Editor Louis Rossetto put it, as though "the illiterate could tell you what to read."

Well, fuck them.

Or, more to the point, let us now take our leave of them. They have declared war on Cyberspace. Let us show them how cunning, baffling, and powerful we can be in our own defense.

I have written something (with characteristic grandiosity) that I hope will become one of many means to this end. If you find it useful, I hope you will pass it on as widely as possible. You can leave my name off it if you like, because I don't care about the credit. I really don't.

But I do hope this cry will echo across Cyberspace, changing and growing and self-replicating, until it becomes a great shout equal to the idiocy they have just inflicted upon us.

I give you...

Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace

Governments of the Industrial World, you weary giants of flesh and steel, I come from Cyberspace, the new home of Mind. On behalf of the future, I ask you of the past to leave us alone. You are not welcome among us. You have no sovereignty where we gather.

We have no elected government, nor are we likely to have one, so I address you with no greater authority than that with which liberty itself always speaks. I declare the global social space we are building to be naturally independent of the tyrannies you seek to impose on us. You have no moral right to rule us nor do you possess any methods of enforcement we have true reason to fear.

Governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed. You have neither solicited nor received ours. We did not invite you. You do not know us, nor do you know our world. Cyberspace does not lie within your borders. Do not think that you can build it, as though it were a public construction project. You cannot. It is an act of nature and it grows itself through our collective actions.

You have not engaged in our great and gathering conversation, nor did you create the wealth of our marketplaces. You do not know our culture, our ethics, or the unwritten codes that already provide our society more order than could be obtained by any of your impositions.

You claim there are problems among us that you need to solve. You use this claim as an excuse to invade our precincts. Many of these problems don't exist. Where there are real conflicts, where there are wrongs, we will identify them and address them by our means. We are forming our own Social Contract . This governance will arise according to the conditions of our world, not yours. Our world is different.

Cyberspace consists of transactions, relationships, and thought itself, array...