A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace

A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace
by
J.P.Barlow

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.
We have no elected government, nor are we likely to have one, so I address you with no greater authority
than that with which liberty itself always speaks. I declare the global social space we are building to be
naturally independent of the tyrannies you seek to impose on us. You have no moral right to rule us nor
do you possess any methods of enforcement we have true reason to fear.
Governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed. You have neither solicited nor
received ours. We did not invite you. You do not know us, nor do you know our world. Cyberspace does
not lie within your borders. Do not think that you can build it, as though it were a public construction
project. You cannot. It is an act of nature and it grows itself through our collective actions.
You have not engaged in our great and gathering conversation, nor did you create the wealth of our
marketplaces. You do not know our culture, our ethics, or the unwritten codes that already provide our
society more order than could be obtained by any of your impositions.
You claim there are problems among us that you need to solve. You use this claim as an excuse to invade
our precincts. Many of these problems don't exist. Where there are real conflicts, where there are wrongs,
we will identify them and address them by our means. We are forming our own Social Contract . This
governance will arise according to the conditions of our world, not yours. Our world is different.
Cyberspace consists of transactions, relationships, and thought itself, arrayed like a standing wave in the
web of our communications. Ours is a world that is both everywhere and nowhere, but it is not where
bodies live.
We are creating a world that all may enter without privilege or prejudice accorded by race, economic
power, military force, or station of birth.
We are creating a world where anyone, anywhere may express his or her beliefs, no matter how singular,
without fear of being coerced into silence or conformity.
Your legal concepts of property, expression, identity, movement, and context do not apply to us. They are
all based on matter, and there is no matter here.
Our identities have no bodies, so, unlike you, we cannot obtain order by physical coercion. We believe
that from ethics, enlightened self-interest, and the commonweal, our governance will emerge . Our
identities may be distributed across many of your jurisdictions. The only law that all our constituent
cultures would generally recognize is the Golden Rule. We hope we will be able to build our particular
solutions on that basis. But we cannot accept the solutions you are attempting to impose.
In the United States, you have today created a law, the Telecommunications Reform Act, which
repudiates your own Constitution and insults the dreams of Jefferson, Washington, Mill, Madison,
DeToqueville, and Brandeis. These dreams must now be born anew in us.
You are terrified of your own children, since they are natives in a world where you will always be
immigrants. Because you fear them, you entrust your bureaucracies with the parental responsibilities you
are too cowardly to confront yourselves. In our world, all the sentiments and expressions of humanity,
from the debasing to the angelic, are parts of a seamless whole, the global conversation of bits. We cannot
separate the air that chokes from the air upon which wings beat.
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.
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.
These increasingly hostile and colonial measures place us in the same position as those previous lovers of
freedom and self-determination who had to reject the authorities of distant, uninformed powers. We must
declare our virtual selves immune to your sovereignty, even as we continue to consent to your rule over
our bodies. We will spread ourselves across the Planet so that no one can arrest our thoughts.
We will create a civilization of the Mind in Cyberspace. May it be more humane and fair than the world
your governments have made before.
Davos, Switzerland
February 8, 1996

Slovensky preklad, ktory som nasiel na kybe thx to id daniel
Deklaracia nezavislosti Kyberpriestoru

Vlady priemyselneho Sveta, vy znaveni obri svalov a ocele, prichadzam z
Kyberpriestoru, noveho domova Mysle. V zaujme buducnosti, ziadam vas z minulosti aby ste nas nechali na pokoji. Nieste vitani medzi nami. Tam kde sa stretavame nemate ziadnu suverenitu.

Nemame ziadnu zvolenu vladu, a ani ziadnu mat nehodlame, takze vam pisem len s tou autoritou, ktorou sama sloboda vzdy hovori. Deklarujem nezavislost globalneho spolocenskeho priestoru ktory staviame od tyranii ktore na nas chcete uplatnit. Nemate ziadne moralne pravo vladnut nam, a taktiez nevlastnite ziadne metody natlaku ktorych by sme sa mali naozaj bat.

Vlady odvodzuju ich moc so suhlasom tych ktorym vladnu. Od nas ste si ziadny nevyziadali, a taktiez ste ziadny ani neziskali. Nepozvali sme vas. Nepoznate nas, a taktiez nepoznate nas svet. Kyberpriestor nelezi vo vasich hraniciach. Nemyslite si ze ho mozete postavit ako keby to bol nejaky verejny projekt. Nemozete. Je to akt prirody, a rastie sam od seba vdaka nasim kolektivnym cinom.

Neangazovali ste sa do nasich konverzacii, nestvorili ste bohatstvo nasich trhov. Nepoznate nasu kulturu, etiku, nepisane pravidla ktore uz dnes nasmu spolocenstvu poskytuju viac poriadku ako vase nariadenia.

Vravite ze su medzi nami problemy, ktore vy musite vyriesit. Myslite si, ze to vas opravnuje k vstupu do nasej zony. Mnohe z tychto problemov neexistuju. Tam, kde su ozajstne konflikty, tam kde sa pacha ozajstne zlo, tam zakrocime, avsak podla nasich pravidiel a prostriedkov. Formujeme svoj vlastny Spolocensky Kontrakt. Tato vlada vznikne podla podmienok nasho sveta, nie toho vasho. Nas svet je totiz odlisny.

Kyberpriestor sa sklada z transakcii, vztahov, a myslienok samotnych, zoradenych ako stojaca vlna v pavucine komunikacie. Nas je svet, ktory je zaroven vsade aj nikde, ale nieje tam kde ziju nase tela.

Tvorime svet, do ktoreho budu moct vstupit vsetci, bez privilegii, bez predsudkov, nezalezi nam na rase, ekonomickom alebo vojenskom postaveni, nezaujima nas miesto narodenia,

Tvorime svet, kde si kazdy bude moct vsade vyjadrit svoje jedinecne myslienky, bez strachu z toho ze bude donuteny stichnut, bez strachu z toho ze bude dotlaceny do konformity.

Vase pravne koncepty majetku, vyjadrenia, identity, pohybu a kontextu pre nas neplatia. Vsetky su zalozene na hmote, a tu, tu neexistuje ziadna hmota.

Nase identity nemaju ziadne tela, takze nemozeme, ako vy, ziskat poriadok a pravo fyzickym donutenim. Verime ze nasa "vlada" povstane z etiky, osvieteneho
seba-zaujmu a verejneho blaha. Nase identity mozu byt roztrusene po mnohych vasich jurisdikciach. Jedine pravo ktore nasa kultura obecne spozna bude Zlate Pravidlo "nerob inym to co nechces aby robili ini tebe".
Dufame ze budeme schopny postavat dane riesenia na tejto baze. Ale nemozme akceptovat riesenia ktore sa nam vy snazite natlacit.

V Spojenych Statoch ste vytvorili zakon, Telecommunication Reform Act, ktory neuznava vasu vlastnu Ustavu a uraza sny Jeffersona, Washingtona, Milla, Madisona, deToquevilla a Brandeisa. Tieto sny sa musia zrodit znovu. V nas.

Bojite sa vlastnych deti, pretoze su obyvatelmi sveta v ktorom vy budete vzdy len pristahovalcami. Pretoze sa ich bojite, odovzdavate svoje rodicovske pravomoci byrokraciam, ste prilis zbabely aby ste konfrontovali seba a svoje problemy priamo. V nasom svete su vsetky city, vsetky prejavy ludskosti , od tych najhorsich az k anjelskym sucastou celku, sucastou globalnej konverzacie bitov. Nemozme oddelit vzduch ktory dusi od vzduchu v ktorom trepocu kridla anjelov.

V Cine, Nemecku, Francuzsku, Rusku, Singapure, Talianskua a Spojenych Statoch (no momentalne uz skoro vsade, Slovensko nevynimajuc -pozn. prekladatela) sa pokusate dostat pod kontrolu virus zvany sloboda stavanim straznych vezi na hraniciach Kyberpriestoru. Moze to nachvilu zastavit nakazu, ale aj tak nebudu fungovat vo svete ktory bude coskoro prikryty pod pokryvkou bity-nesuceho media.

Vas coraz viac a viac zbytocnejsi a neaktualnejsi informacny priemysel sa zvecni presadzovanim zakonov, v Amerike aj inde, ktore budu zaistovat vlastnictvo nad recou samotnou na celom svete. Tieto zakony povazuju myslienky len za dalsie priemyselne produkty, nic vznesenejsie ako prasa alebo zelezo. V nasom svete, vsetko co ludska mysel stvori ma pravo byt reprodukovane a rozsirovane donekonecna zadarmo. Uz nepotrebujeme vase tovarne ku globalnej preprave myslienok.

Tieto coraz viac nasilnejsie a kolonialnejsie prostriedky nas davaju do takej istej pozicie ako tych predchadzajucich milovnikov slobody a sebaurcenia, ktory museli odmietnut autoritu vzdialenej, neinformovanej moci. Musime vyhlasit nase virtualne "ja" za nezavisle a imunne od vasej suverenity, aj ked este stale budeme pokracovat v suhlase s vasou vladou nad nasimi telami. Rozsirime sa po celej planete, takze nikto nebude moct
zatknut nase myslienky.

Stvorime civilizaciu Mysle v Kyberpriestore. Snad bude humannejsia a
fairovejsia ako svet ktory stvorili vase vlady.

Myslim, ze je celkom pekne si toto pripomenut.

Na margo coraz castejsieho zasahovania statov do "kybersveta".