A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace

https://www.eff.org/cyberspace-independence#main-content

by r3trohack3r • 3 years ago

46 9 3 years ago

a_bonobo• 3 years ago

Ah, remember the days when the Internet still held infinite promise? When we outright dismissed that it's possible for China to control its own internet? When we could imagine that giant corporations would take over the world, but could not imagine that these same corporations would turn the internet into three boring, humdrum walled-off corporate gardens? When we believed that access to all this information would bring in a new age of enlightenment? When we could imagine open source, but could not imagine that corporations would just siphon up all that free labor?

What a trip down memory lane.

NoZebra120vClip• 3 years ago

Yeah, I'd say there was more trust, and reputation meant something. Careers were made and broken on Usenet and over email, and bad behavior could be effectively frowned on and nipped in the bud, usually.

I used to write essays about how much I admired RMS, and his idealistic vision of libre software, free like the air we breathe. Of course, I wanted free software because I was not rich, and software was expensive, so of course I preferred it!

There was a famous mailing list in those days, "com-priv" where all the thought leaders discussed the ramifications, and the process for implementing, a transition from R&E, government-subsidized, to commercial and privatized Internet. I was dropped smack-dab into the middle of that revolution, and I truly felt both sides of it.

The Internet, as conceived as an audacious techno-mage DARPA project, and then rolled out to academia, was absolutely fascinating and 100% culturally distinct from the Internet we have today. But the Internet today needs funding, it needs support, and it needs to be under regulation, and so we got the one we really deserve, I suppose.

gary_0• 3 years ago

remember the days when the Internet still held infinite promise?

Honestly, the memory is starting to fade. What Internet was here before...? It's hard to recall, now that it's all been bulldozed over and other things have been built on top.

hellojesus• 3 years ago

It's still there. Here's an example of where you can begin. https://search.marginalia.nu/explore/random

tmaly• 3 years ago

I remember using Matt's Script archive to setup cgi-scripts on my college web page.

Going on IRC to chat. Everyone was polite and easy to talk with. There were not any scammers I could see.

We still have open protocols, we could still use things like that. If it were challenging technically to use, then only those that understood would use it.

ThrowawayR2• 3 years ago

"...[we] could not imagine that these same corporations would turn the internet into three boring, humdrum walled-off corporate gardens?"

One word: AOL

(Okay, technically CompuServe as well. The point is that the public was aware of and perfectly fine with corporate walled gardens even back then.)

"...[we] could not imagine that corporations would just siphon up all that free labor"

Say what now? The FOSS crowd were literally begging corporations to adopt Free Software with slogans like "free as in speech and free as in beer" with the aim of killing the "evil Micro$haft monopoly" (sic), the much hated Business Software Alliance, and supplanting proprietary software in general. Every adoption of FOSS or Linux by a business got celebrated on /. as if it were a great triumph.

Them later acting surprised that businesses only ever cared about the the "free beer" aspect and were taking them up on their offer because of that and the eventual sharp U-turn from FOSS into open core and other totally-proprietary-but-we're-going-to-pretend-it's-open software licenses has been a source of endless schadenfreude to me ever since.

I was there in that era too. Those who could not imagine such things were being utterly blind.

egypturnash• 3 years ago

(1996) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Declaration_of_the_Independe...

jdkee• 3 years ago

I miss the early 90s techno-utopianism. Wired magazine, ISDN at home, Pentium, 10base-T, the glorious soon-to-be Information Superhighway.

fsckboy• 3 years ago

no love for 10base-2?

though if it wasn't for 10base-T, I wouldn't have been able to take a bunch of retired 10base-2 gear home!

A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace

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