A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace
We discussed the independence of the Web in an article about the genesis of the "Metaverse". The podcast linked below is an excellent complement for those who want to learn more about these struggles that were concrete and effective. This piece of (cyber)culture, the dream of techno-libertarian hippies of the 1990s, is little known in France, where almost nobody was aware of these battles from the early days of the internet (sic - Yann Minh).
"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."
— John Perry Barlow, A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace
For the American John Perry Barlow, in the 1990s, the internet was going to change the world. He was right: digital civilization has become our omnipresent reality. But at what cost? Has the libertarian, emancipatory utopia not been privatized and corrupted by GAFAM, these internet giants?
A podcast looking back at this declaration of the independence of cyberspace:
Listen to the podcast on France Culture
Historical Context
The Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace is a famous text written on February 8, 1996 in Davos, Switzerland by John Perry Barlow, a writer, activist, and co-founder of the Electronic Frontier Foundation. It supports the idea that no government (nor any other form of power) can impose itself upon or appropriate the Internet, which had been created six years earlier and was still in its infancy and rapidly expanding at the time.
It was written partly in response to the adoption of the Telecommunications Act of 1996 in the United States — under Bill Clinton's presidency. The Communications Decency Act (CDA), incorporated into the Telecommunications Act, aimed to censor certain offensive and pornographic content and made it illegal, punishable by a $250,000 fine, to, for example, say "shit" online, speak explicitly about abortion, or discuss various bodily functions in anything other than strictly clinical terms, thereby tending to limit certain freedoms on the Internet.
Due to its subject matter, this declaration became famous within the first weeks of its publication; it remains popular on the Internet to this day. Regarding the part of the Telecommunications Act concerning online expression (CDA), the outcry from Barlow and other civil liberties defenders bore fruit: in June 1997, after several months of legal battle, the Supreme Court ruled it incompatible with the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.