From: John Perry Barlow 
Subject: A Cyberspace Independence Declaration

Yesterday, that great invertebrate in the White House signed into the
law the Telecom "Reform" Act of 1996, while Tipper Gore took digital
photographs of the proceedings to be included in a book called "24
Hours in Cyberspace."

I had also been asked to participate in the creation of this book by
writing something appropriate to the moment. Given the atrocity that
this legislation would seek to inflict on the Net, I decided it was as
good a time as any to dump some tea in the virtual harbor.

After all, the Telecom "Reform" Act, passed in the Senate with only 5
dissenting votes, makes it unlawful, and punishable by a $250,000 to
say "shit" online. Or, for that matter, to say any of the other 7
dirty words prohibited in broadcast media. Or to discuss abortion
openly. Or to talk about any bodily function in any but the most
clinical terms.

It attempts to place more restrictive constraints on the conversation
in Cyberspace than presently exist in the Senate cafeteria, where I
have dined and heard colorful indecencies spoken by United States
senators on every occasion I did.

This bill was enacted upon us by people who haven't the slightest idea
who we are or where our conversation is being conducted. It is, as my
good friend and Wired Editor Louis Rossetto put it, as though "the
illiterate could tell you what to read."

Well, fuck them.

Or, more to the point, let us now take our leave of them. They have
declared war on Cyberspace. Let us show them how cunning, baffling,
and powerful we can be in our own defense.

I have written something (with characteristic grandiosity) that I hope
will become one of many means to this end. If you find it useful, I
hope you will pass it on as widely as possible. You can leave my name
off it if you like, because I don't care about the credit. I really
don't.

But I do hope this cry will echo across Cyberspace, changing and
growing and self-replicating, until it becomes a great shout equal to
the idiocy they have just inflicted upon us.

I give you...



A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace



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