John Perry Barlow has died
eff.org
John Perry Barlow has died
1–10 of 140 posts
Re: John Perry Barlow has died
#2A grave loss, the world needs more people like him, not less.
Re: John Perry Barlow has died
#3If Barlow doesn't deserve the HN black bar, I don't know who does. He fought for electronic freedoms tirelessly for decades, fending off companies who wanted to control the Internet or individuals' rights to hack technology they own.
Re: John Perry Barlow has died
#4Never heard of the guy until 2005 where CNET interviewed him about his interest in skype. Thus me and my friend downloaded Skype and called him. We chatted for five or ten minutes and he remained on my friends Skype since. Later found out he was in the Grateful Dead in same shape or form.
Re: John Perry Barlow has died
#5It's weird reading this because I very recently found out that a girl I went to high school with was his daughter. I had no idea back then (14+ years ago). This is a sad loss for the community and I'm sure his family as well.
Re: John Perry Barlow has died
#6Barlow's Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace [0] is one of the quintessential works that made the web the free place it is. What a great loss.
As a teenager, Barlow's writings inspired me and many others to do things such as paint our websites black to protest the Communications Decency Act, and write lots of actual letters which, in aggregate, effected change legally and socially.
In 2000 at Comdex, I remember Barlow saying that he had no love for the record companies - as a member of the Grateful Dead he had never received a royalty statement that didn't say he owed the company money. This was during the height of the war on MP3s when other artists were claiming they were being robbed at gunpoint or something.
Re: John Perry Barlow has died
#7Here's a link to his "A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace" from 1996, published 22 years ago tomorrow:
https://www.eff.org/cyberspace-independence
I always loved these bits:
"Cyberspace consists of transactions, relationships, and thought itself, arrayed like a standing wave in the web of our communications."
And:
"Your increasingly obsolete information industries would perpetuate themselves by proposing laws, in America and elsewhere, that claim to own speech itself throughout the world. These laws would declare ideas to be another industrial product, no more noble than pig iron. In our world, whatever the human mind may create can be reproduced and distributed infinitely at no cost. The global conveyance of thought no longer requires your factories to accomplish."
RIP.
Re: John Perry Barlow has died
#8Here's a link to his "A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace" from 1996, published 22 years ago tomorrow: https://www.eff.org/cyberspace-independence I always loved these bits: "Cyberspace consists of transactions, relationships, and thought itself, arrayed like a standing wave in the web of our communications." And: "Your increasingly obsolete information industries would perpetuate themselves by proposing…
Recording of John Perry Barlow reading his "A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace": https://vimeo.com/111576518
Re: John Perry Barlow has died
#9If Barlow doesn't deserve the HN black bar, I don't know who does. He fought for electronic freedoms tirelessly for decades, fending off companies who wanted to control the Internet or individuals' rights to hack technology they own.
Agreed. This is a huge loss.
Re: John Perry Barlow has died
#10Man, this makes me sad beyond words. It's a great loss for all of us, even those who don't realize it.