5 ms·

JP Barlow: A Declaration of Independence for Cyberspace

78 points by bproper 15y ago

deleted 15y ago
[deleted]
maeon3 15y ago
This needs to be on the top of the HN frontpage.
archgoon 15y ago
For those, like me, who were confused about the censorship that clearly didn't happen, here is a relevant piece of info from wikipedia. "Title V of the 1996 Act is the Communications Decency Act, aimed at regulating Internet indecency and obscenity, but was ruled unconstitutional by the U.S. Supreme Court for violating the First Amendment. Portions of Title V remain, including the Good Samaritan Act, which protects ISPs from liability for third party content on their services, and legal definitions of the Internet." And the wikipedia link in general for the act: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telecommunications_Act_of_1996 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telecommunications_Act_of_1996 I believe this was the court case that resulted in the relevant portion of the act being struck down by all nine supreme court justices. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reno_v._ACLU http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reno_v._ACLU
pjscott 15y ago
And a nicer-to-read HTML version: https://projects.eff.org/~barlow/Declaration-Final.html https://projects.eff.org/~barlow/Declaration-Final.html
- deleted 15y ago
  [deleted]
- TuxPirate 15y ago
  Text is nicer.
gr0nk 15y ago
I thought this was the coolest thing in '96. All these years later it just reads like self parody. The Internet is very much a part of the terrestrial world, and governments do possess methods of enforcement we have true reason to fear. It sucks, but grandiose proclamations don't change that.
- deleted 15y ago
  [deleted]
- pnathan 15y ago
  There was a tremendous amount of techno-utopianism in the early 90s. The internet & computers would bring peace, love, erase national borders, enable society to be utterly transformed into a global place without work, strife, etc. Mondo 2000, early Wired, and Rushkoff were big proponents of that thought paradigm. I see Barlow's essay as an offshoot of that paradigm. Unfortunately, it didn't work out that way.
  - slowpoke 15y ago
    >Unfortunately, it didn't work out that way. We're still very much at the beginning, and it's far too early to say anything like that. If at all, we've been slightly thrown back. I still believe everything you dismissed as "techno-utopianism" to be possible one day. Social change rarely happens overnight. We have to work and fight for it.
    - pnathan 15y ago
      Oh, there's a lot of possibility out there and some of it has been realized. But, unfortunately, there was a lot of ignoring human nature going on at the time. People are simply a lot grittier than the future of the time was portrayed.
tptacek 15y ago
Or, "Remember when the EFF didn't matter?" The EFF of 2012 doesn't "declare independence" from society, or talk about "weary giants of flesh and steel". It puts its money where its mouth is, working within the system to fund research, legal aid, and advocacy.
- pork 15y ago
  Excellent, trenchant point, and also why RMS gradually needs to fade away from the EFF (only). You can't have a belligerent and extremist mouthpiece and be taken seriously in law.
  - sunir 15y ago
    Richard Stallman (RMS) runs the Free Software Foundation (FSF), not the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF). https://www.eff.org/about/board https://www.eff.org/about/board
dennisgorelik 15y ago
Sounds like grand-parent of anti-SOPA battle.
peterwwillis 15y ago
Reads like an Anonymous PR piece, though more mature. If only Barrett Brown could write in a non-douchey way like this. It strikes me as odd that Anonymous doesn't seem to work with the EFF on critical issues... they have a lot of support and manpower that could be really useful in working to fight things like SOPA (instead of attacking websites, committing fraud, releasing personal information of random individuals and generally vandalizing systems & networks). Let's see where they are in 10 years.
- slowpoke 15y ago
  You (and many others) fail to realize that Anonymous isn't an organization. It's an anarchistic collective with an extremely loosely defined set of common goals and values which anybody can consider themselves member of[1]. Anonymous doesn't have official positions, affiliations or representatives[2]. Each member acts on their own, and on many occasions they form groups and cooperate to start projects or operations, which sometimes become big (like Operation Payback for example). In other words, I can assure you that members of Anonymous are working with or for the EFF. But Anonymous isn't something you can just declare to be supportive of the EFF. Nobody can. [1] Member is actually a bad word for this, but I can't really think of a better term. There's no "membership" for Anonymous technically, there's just people considering themselves part of Anonymous. [2] Neither are there some ominous "masterminds" behind Anonymous, as some people wrongfully assume.
  - peterwwillis 15y ago
    Wouldn't an anarchistic collective imply that they all follow a specific political philosophy? I've never seen a wholly-accepted political agenda centered around anarchism that came from Anonymous. Do you have a source for this? Anonymous is an autonomous or 'leaderless' collective. Yes, you're right that they have no 'official' positions, similar to the Occupy movement. But who organizes? Who makes press releases? Who builds network infrastructure? Who issues commands to the rest of the group? And who follows those plans, uses that network and executes the commands? All you need is one strong personality that articulates the general urges of the group into a specific action they can all agree with and poof, you have yourself a leader and goals which can be worked toward. Every single 'operation' is essentially this. You can quibble over different factions or timing or independent values all you want but it's the same as how terrorist cells and abortion-clinic bombers work, though spread out over the internet and bombing websites instead. So don't tell me Anonymous can or can't declare or deny support (which it has many times in the past). This is the very fabric that Anonymous is built on: collective reasoning.

78 points by bproper 15y ago

deleted 15y ago

[deleted]

maeon3 15y ago

This needs to be on the top of the HN frontpage.

archgoon 15y ago

For those, like me, who were confused about the censorship that clearly didn't happen, here is a relevant piece of info from wikipedia. "Title V of the 1996 Act is the Communications Decency Act, aimed at regulating Internet indecency and obscenity, but was ruled unconstitutional by the U.S. Supreme Court for violating the First Amendment. Portions of Title V remain, including the Good Samaritan Act, which protects ISPs from liability for third party content on their services, and legal definitions of the Internet." And the wikipedia link in general for the act: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telecommunications_Act_of_1996 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telecommunications_Act_of_1996 I believe this was the court case that resulted in the relevant portion of the act being struck down by all nine supreme court justices. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reno_v._ACLU http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reno_v._ACLU

pjscott 15y ago

And a nicer-to-read HTML version: https://projects.eff.org/~barlow/Declaration-Final.html https://projects.eff.org/~barlow/Declaration-Final.html

deleted 15y ago
[deleted]
TuxPirate 15y ago
Text is nicer.

gr0nk 15y ago

I thought this was the coolest thing in '96. All these years later it just reads like self parody. The Internet is very much a part of the terrestrial world, and governments do possess methods of enforcement we have true reason to fear. It sucks, but grandiose proclamations don't change that.

deleted 15y ago
[deleted]
pnathan 15y ago
There was a tremendous amount of techno-utopianism in the early 90s. The internet & computers would bring peace, love, erase national borders, enable society to be utterly transformed into a global place without work, strife, etc. Mondo 2000, early Wired, and Rushkoff were big proponents of that thought paradigm. I see Barlow's essay as an offshoot of that paradigm. Unfortunately, it didn't work out that way.
- slowpoke 15y ago
  >Unfortunately, it didn't work out that way. We're still very much at the beginning, and it's far too early to say anything like that. If at all, we've been slightly thrown back. I still believe everything you dismissed as "techno-utopianism" to be possible one day. Social change rarely happens overnight. We have to work and fight for it.
  - pnathan 15y ago
    Oh, there's a lot of possibility out there and some of it has been realized. But, unfortunately, there was a lot of ignoring human nature going on at the time. People are simply a lot grittier than the future of the time was portrayed.

tptacek 15y ago

Or, "Remember when the EFF didn't matter?" The EFF of 2012 doesn't "declare independence" from society, or talk about "weary giants of flesh and steel". It puts its money where its mouth is, working within the system to fund research, legal aid, and advocacy.

pork 15y ago
Excellent, trenchant point, and also why RMS gradually needs to fade away from the EFF (only). You can't have a belligerent and extremist mouthpiece and be taken seriously in law.
- sunir 15y ago
  Richard Stallman (RMS) runs the Free Software Foundation (FSF), not the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF). https://www.eff.org/about/board https://www.eff.org/about/board

dennisgorelik 15y ago

Sounds like grand-parent of anti-SOPA battle.

peterwwillis 15y ago

Reads like an Anonymous PR piece, though more mature. If only Barrett Brown could write in a non-douchey way like this. It strikes me as odd that Anonymous doesn't seem to work with the EFF on critical issues... they have a lot of support and manpower that could be really useful in working to fight things like SOPA (instead of attacking websites, committing fraud, releasing personal information of random individuals and generally vandalizing systems & networks). Let's see where they are in 10 years.

slowpoke 15y ago
You (and many others) fail to realize that Anonymous isn't an organization. It's an anarchistic collective with an extremely loosely defined set of common goals and values which anybody can consider themselves member of[1]. Anonymous doesn't have official positions, affiliations or representatives[2]. Each member acts on their own, and on many occasions they form groups and cooperate to start projects or operations, which sometimes become big (like Operation Payback for example). In other words, I can assure you that members of Anonymous are working with or for the EFF. But Anonymous isn't something you can just declare to be supportive of the EFF. Nobody can. [1] Member is actually a bad word for this, but I can't really think of a better term. There's no "membership" for Anonymous technically, there's just people considering themselves part of Anonymous. [2] Neither are there some ominous "masterminds" behind Anonymous, as some people wrongfully assume.
- peterwwillis 15y ago
  Wouldn't an anarchistic collective imply that they all follow a specific political philosophy? I've never seen a wholly-accepted political agenda centered around anarchism that came from Anonymous. Do you have a source for this? Anonymous is an autonomous or 'leaderless' collective. Yes, you're right that they have no 'official' positions, similar to the Occupy movement. But who organizes? Who makes press releases? Who builds network infrastructure? Who issues commands to the rest of the group? And who follows those plans, uses that network and executes the commands? All you need is one strong personality that articulates the general urges of the group into a specific action they can all agree with and poof, you have yourself a leader and goals which can be worked toward. Every single 'operation' is essentially this. You can quibble over different factions or timing or independent values all you want but it's the same as how terrorist cells and abortion-clinic bombers work, though spread out over the internet and bombing websites instead. So don't tell me Anonymous can or can't declare or deny support (which it has many times in the past). This is the very fabric that Anonymous is built on: collective reasoning.