The first serious infowar is now engaged

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

by organicgrant • 16 years ago

144 57 16 years ago

projects.eff.org

thefool3• 16 years ago

The thing is, you still need some institutions to provide public goods within each region of the earth, and these invariably have to be governments.

organicgrant5• 16 years ago

Can you be a bit clearer? I'm not seeing anything constructive yet.

Roads aren't ideas, they're hunks of concrete.

pronoiac• 16 years ago

The Information Superhighway is just a metaphor that requires no actual concrete.

daeken• 16 years ago

Roads are by no means public goods, as it is very possible to exclude people from them, e.g. tolls.

A good example is a dam. If you live in a valley that floods every year, the government may well come in and say, "we're going to build a dam." But by its very nature, you cannot exclude people from this -- the dam will hold back all of the water, not just for some of the people in the valley.

ataggart• 16 years ago

How are you defining "public goods"?

Most people don't mean anything so precise as "goods which are, by their nature, both non-rivalrous and non-excludable." Nor do they simply mean "goods which are presently provided by the government." Rather, I suspect what most people mean by "public goods" is these goods which, by their nature, only the government can provide. This question begging has little utility beyond lending the imprimatur of economic legitimacy to the state.

_delirium2• 16 years ago

It seems like a perfectly useful concept to me: if there are indeed goods that, by their nature, only some social arrangement like a government or a de facto government can provide, and if I think that at least some of these goods are things that ought to be provided, it follows that there are are reasons to favor having governments. I don't personally care much what phrase we use to describe them. I have in mind things that even relative state-minimalists like F.A. Hayek had in mind as legitimate roles for governments, like provision of basic health care, defense against invasion, police and fire services, and a social safety net.

(One counterargument would be to claim that there are no goods that, by their nature, can only be provided by a government, but I don't read that as what you're arguing. Of course, another counterargument would be to claim that no such goods are desirable, or at least not desirable enough to justify government existing.)

wladimir• 16 years ago

That's currently the case, but let's hope that will change or that at least the governments of the future will be smaller and will respect (real) freedom.

borism• 16 years ago

I'm not against governments, I'm against the way they're being run today.

rue2• 16 years ago

Indeed. A government as a separate entity from "the people" should start going away (and communications technology is a key piece in that evolution).

kragen4• 16 years ago

Your statement is completely wrong, from beginning to end.

(I am going to do my readers the honor of assuming they know what a public good is. If not, I suggest they look it up.)

Science is a public good. Lots of science is funded by governments, but lots of science is done without government funding, too.

Recorded music and books are now public goods, now that it is so cheap to copy them and to find instances to copy. Only a small fraction of them are provided by governments. Many of them are provided by individuals rather than institutions of any kind.

TV and radio broadcasts are a public good. In some countries, they are mostly provided by governments, but in almost all countries, they are at least partly provided by private parties who fund them with advertising. In the US, many "public TV stations" are actually funded mostly by public subscription, using "pledge drives" in which viewers receive an item of nominal value in exchange for pledging to donate to the station if enough other people do so; this is a variety of the dominant assurance contract.

Views of fireworks that go more than a few meters high are a public good. Here in Buenos Aires, they are provided almost exclusively by private individuals. At Christmas and New Year's, the sky over the entire city is filled with amazing displays. In countries with less freedom, such displays are sometimes provided exclusively by governments, but that is far from invariable.

Lighthouses were public goods. Palacio Barolo, the lighthouse six blocks from my house, is now only operational as a lighthouse one night a month, and in any case it's been obsoleted by radio systems and impeded by the building of other, taller buildings between it and the river, but it was constructed by a wealthy businessman.

Many public goods, including TV broadcasts, lighthouses, views of fireworks, and recorded music, are definitely not needed.

In conclusion, you don't need anybody to provide public goods; entities that are not institutions often provide public goods; many public goods can be provided worldwide, rather than within particular regions; even in cases where public goods are provided by institutions, the institutions are often not governments or government-supported; and even in cases where public goods are provided by governments, those same public goods are also often provided by non-government institutions as well.

I am not taking any position here on whether or not governments are necessary.

carbocation2• 16 years ago

The original title, "A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace," is more compelling. Also, note that this is from 1996.

Palomides• 16 years ago

interesting how it is pertinent again with the .p2p effort to make a decentralized DNS system, independent of governmental authority.

organicgrant5• 16 years ago

WikiLeakiaspora?

afterburner2• 16 years ago

So, two links near the top of HN are from 1996? Is December Internet History Month?

sukuriant4• 16 years ago

Or internet discovery month, for those that did not travel this part of the internet during those times. The age of an article does not necessarily negate its worthiness of being read or spoken about.

fjarlq• 16 years ago

Note the title used here is from a tweet by John Perry Barlow yesterday:

"The first serious infowar is now engaged. The field of battle is WikiLeaks. You are the troops."

-- http://twitter.com/JPBarlow/status/10627544017534976

carbocation2• 16 years ago

That is very helpful context; thank you for sharing.

jhrobert• 16 years ago

I know which side I stand.

citrik• 16 years ago

Great prose, but honestly I was expecting (between wikileaks vs amazon and comcast vs netflix) that there was going to be a dissection of the actual infowar that is happening around us now. May we live in interesting times indeed...

sudont2• 16 years ago

It’s really ironic that history is boring as it’s happening.

tectonic• 16 years ago

See also the excellent free, short story by Cory Doctorow that mentions this essay: http://baens-universe.com/articles/when_sysadmins_ruled_the_...

iwr• 16 years ago

Remember the last Declaration of independence triggered a war. Don't expect the political to consider any accessible space off-limits.

Helianthus162• 16 years ago

remember the last Declaration was important, made by people with political power and influence. This is merely an idealistic essay rather than an action--it describes a movement, it does not _compel_ movement.

organicgrant5• 16 years ago

Political power and influence usually begin with an individual writing an idealistic essay...

Thomas Jefferson, Ron Paul, Adolf Hitler, (prisoner to Chancellor in under 10 years), Barack Obama (nobody to President in under 10 years)

...I could go on, but I'll let others add names and stories

chopsueyar2• 16 years ago

I'm just glad the EFF is not considered a terrorist organization by the US government because of this.

It does seem to condone the abolition of IP rights, though.

kragen4• 16 years ago

No, the EFF does not have a position in favor of the abolition of any of the random grab-bag of rights known as "IP rights". Some of its board members have such positions, while others have quite contrary positions. As a result, the organization compromises.

chopsueyar2• 16 years ago

I meant the linked-to article's author, not the EFF as an organization.

eplanit• 16 years ago

It reads like it was written by a young, naive child...like a "No Girls Allowed" sign on a tree house.

plurinshael• 16 years ago

Or, you're reading it like a young, naive child, whose mother won't let you up into the neighbor's tree house. One of those two.

jdp23• 16 years ago

Great essay -- although parts of it are very 1996 :-)

The whole "past trying to rule the future" dynamic he talks about here remains incredibly relevant. Oh yeah and this too:

"In China, Germany, France, Russia, Singapore, Italy and the United States, you are trying to ward off the virus of liberty by erecting guard posts at the frontiers of Cyberspace. These may keep out the contagion for a small time, but they will not work in a world that will soon be blanketed in bit-bearing media."

ctkrohn• 16 years ago

I love 90s techno-optimism. Pick up some old issues of Wired for this sort of thinking. The Internet was viewed as a transformative, unstoppable force for freedom. From an engineering point of view, we're closer to that ideal than we ever have been in the past, but people don't have the same outlook on the future. IMO you can date the death of 90s optimism to the NASDAQ bust and Bill Joy's essay "Why The Future Doesn't Need Us." Both happened within a month of each other.

ichc-werker• 16 years ago

Bill Joy's essay: http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/8.04/joy.html

sudont2• 16 years ago

It’s the same ideology that says progressivism is dead, despite that today’s yellow journalism is watered down, there’s no traditional war between organized countries, sanitation’s up, and we’re getting further along with promoting resource equality in LDCs.

Not only that, but there’s complete ennui in living. I can go out in most parts of the world at night without worry of being beaten, killed or enslaved; the corner market to get fresh broccoli in winter. All of the programmers I know want to buy a house, settle down, and work an unpleasant job in an unfriendly country, when the internet allows any of us to pick up and move and still work.

Welcome to the age of pessimism and cynicism. Also, bedbugs. Just because America is sliding doesn’t mean the world is doomed.

The first serious infowar is now engaged

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