A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace

A Declaration of Independence of Cyberspace ( original English title: "A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace " ) was one of today 's most influential article on the feasibility and legitimacy of state control and hegemony in the rapidly growing Internet. It was written by John Perry Barlow, co-founder of one of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, and published on 8 February 1996 from Davos online. The event from which it was written, was the adoption of the Telecommunications Act of 1996 in the U.S.. Barlow turned so that, among other things vehemently against the possibility of Internet censorship.

Content

The statement begins as follows:

Barlow's declaration takes into sixteen short paragraphs the idea of ​​governability of the Internet by outside forces back, especially by the federal government of the United States. He noted that the government did not possess the consent of the governed to apply laws to the Internet, and stressed that the Internet is outside the limits of any State located, since it is a space outside the physical and material world.

Cyberspace consists of transactions, relationships, and thought that, as Barlow, " as a standing wave are located in the network of our communication ."

The article rejected the applicability of concepts such as property, expression, identity, movement, and context, as they were based on matter. But in cyberspace, there is no matter. Instead, the text, the internet will develop its own social contracts (in the sense of a social contract ) and so determine how problems could be solved based on an ethic of the Golden Rule.

The statement does so in a language that is reminiscent of the Declaration of Independence of the United States, and cited this indirectly in their last paragraphs. Apart from the mention of the Telecommunications Act, accused the Declaration China, Germany, France, Russia, Singapore and Italy to impede the free development of the Internet.

Background

At the time when the declaration was written, Barlow had already extensively published articles on the Internet and its social and legal phenomena and also the Electronic Frontier Foundation co-founded. The work for which he had previously been best known was "The Economy of Ideas". It was published in March 1994 in Wired Magazine and also mentioned Thomas Jefferson and some of the ideas of the Declaration of Independence. Barlow is considered a representative of a techno - libertarian flow, which influenced many Internet pioneers and representatives of the open source culture, such as Eric Raymond and Tim Berners -Lee and also in the highly decentralized implementation of many technological aspects of the Internet and such projects such as the Open Root Server Network reflected. A recent expression of this debate is the debate about net neutrality, in which it is also about the creation of technical limitations of the Internet traffic.

Reception

Due to the subject of the declaration Barlows text quickly became known and widely used on the Internet. Within three months, had an estimated 5,000 websites copies of the declaration. After nine months, the number was estimated at 40,000 copies to come Barlow's vision of a self-governing Internet closer to a Virtual advice from the Cyberspace Law Institute was established, which is now based at the Chicago -Kent College of Law. Council members should be appointed by the Institute and other groups to resolve conflicts online.

Outside of the Internet, the reaction was less positive. Larry Irving, the Deputy U.S. Trade Minister, stated that a lack of backups would slow the growth of a boon for consumers and businesses development. In the online magazine Hotwired the document was described by one commentator simply as " bullshit ".

In 2002, the number of websites that are copies of the declaration was showed estimated at only 20,000. In 2004, Barlow said, looking back to his articles from the 1990s, especially for his optimism: "We 're all getting older and wiser ."

Several very similar documents on the Internet seem to be preceded by the declaration. Although Barlow did not deny that his own manifesto bonds both stylistic and content, nature had taken in other texts, he denies a copy. Who took with whom bonds, and to what extent is not known, but nobody threw Barlow plagiarism before.