

JP Barlow: A Declaration of Independence for Cyberspace - bproper
https://w2.eff.org/Censorship/Internet_censorship_bills/barlow_0296.declaration

======
archgoon
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>

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>

------
tptacek
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
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
Richard Stallman (RMS) runs the Free Software Foundation (FSF), not the
Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF).

<https://www.eff.org/about/board>

------
gr0nk
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.

~~~
pnathan
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
_> 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
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.

------
pjscott
And a nicer-to-read HTML version:

<https://projects.eff.org/~barlow/Declaration-Final.html>

~~~
TuxPirate
Text _is_ nicer.

------
dennisgorelik
Sounds like grand-parent of anti-SOPA battle.

------
peterwwillis
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
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
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.

~~~
slowpoke
_> Wouldn't an anarchistic collective imply that they all follow a specific
political philosophy? _

No, by no means. You confuse the organizational state of anarchy with the
political philosophy of anarchism, which is basically the mistrust or
disbelief into authority. Anonymous is the former, but its "members" are not
necessarily the latter. There are all sorts of ideologies in Anonymous. If you
want to name a single, shared point of belief in Anonymous, your best bet is
probably "For the Lulz", and even that is debatable.

 _> 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._

That's quite right (besides the "strong personality" bit, you really only need
a person with a good idea and the ability to articulate it), but that still
doesn't mean Anonymous has leaders. You completely fail to differentiate
between the collective Anonymous and operations or projects which operate
under the banner of Anonymous[1]. The relation between the two is one-sided -
the latter affiliates with the former, not vice versa.

 _> but it's the same as how terrorist cells and abortion-clinic bombers work,
though spread out over the internet and bombing websites instead._

Ho, are we falling back to guilt-by-association fallacies now? It is certainly
true that operations affiliated with Anonymous have a tendency to operate very
far inside the grey areas of legality and often even far beyond that. So are
many grass-root or civil right movements. Declaring Anonymous as a whole
equivalent to a terrorist cell because they break the law and use similar
organizational methods as established enemy stereotypes is ignoring the
aforementioned points. It's equally as low as declaring the Occupy movement as
domestic terrorism because you disagree with them.

 _> So don't tell me Anonymous can or can't declare or deny support (which it
has many times in the past)._

No, it didn't. Persons, projects or operations affiliated with Anonymous did.
Anonymous as a whole does not, nor will it ever have official support or
opposition of anything, be it ideological positions, organizations or specific
persons.

Besides, don't _you_ tell me what Anonymous can or can't do - I've
participated in or observed first hand a few projects and operations directly
or indirectly affiliated with Anonymous myself over the last two years, and
have been involved with the culture typically associated with them. I've seen
live and in action what I am talking about. Do you?

[1] Which anything and everybody can, that's the whole point.

~~~
peterwwillis
I'm a little too tired right now to comment on the rest but the comparison to
abortion-clinic bombers is accurate. They basically pioneered the use of
leaderless resistance in the United States (i'm not very familiar with
historical use in the rest of the world). I wasn't making the suggestion that
Anonymous hates abortion doctors if that's what you're inferring.
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leaderless_resistance#Internet_...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leaderless_resistance#Internet_activism)

The way you talk about 'Anonymous as a whole' is ridiculous. They don't do
anything as a whole by definition. You have to consider their rhetoric in
general and whether or not they accept actions taken by members of the group.
If one guy says 'we hate Scientology' and the majority of people who identify
with Anonymous agree with that guy in principle, guess what? The group has
just made an implicit collective declaration. You can't identify as a member
of a group and be an active participant in it and then claim no responsibility
for the group's actions just because there's supposedly no leader or official
stance on anything. You are an accomplice, or if you prefer, a willing
participant by association. This wouldn't be the case if the entire idea of
the group weren't that there is no central decision-making; you can distance
yourself from a voice which no longer represents the majority, but you cannot
distance yourself from that which cannot be identified unless you step outside
of the ether entirely.

Which actions do you mean? The botnets, sqli sweeps, social engineering or
meaningless skirmishes with the jester and other pseudo-blackhat douchebags? I
never really paid attention to the early stuff due to a loathing for anything
from 4chan. I'm no expert, but one doesn't need to be a scholar to watch kids
at play.

