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EFF Founder John Perry Barlow Has Died At Age 70 (eff.org)
The Electronic Frontier Foundation reports that its founder, John Perry Barlow, has passed away quietly in his sleep this morning. He was 70 years old. From the report: It is no exaggeration to say that major parts of the Internet we all know and love today exist and thrive because of Barlow's vision and leadership. He always saw the Internet as a fundamental place of freedom, where voices long silenced can find an audience and people can connect with others regardless of physical distance. Barlow was sometimes held up as a straw man for a kind of naive techno-utopianism that believed that the Internet could solve all of humanity's problems without causing any more. As someone who spent the past 27 years working with him at EFF, I can say that nothing could be further from the truth.
Barlow knew that new technology could create and empower evil as much as it could create and empower good. He made a conscious decision to focus on the latter: "I knew it's also true that a good way to invent the future is to predict it. So I predicted Utopia, hoping to give Liberty a running start before the laws of Moore and Metcalfe delivered up what Ed Snowden now correctly calls 'turn-key totalitarianism.'" Barlow's lasting legacy is that he devoted his life to making the Internet into "a world that all may enter without privilege or prejudice accorded by race, economic power, military force, or station of birth... a world where anyone, anywhere may express his or her beliefs, no matter how singular, without fear of being coerced into silence or conformity."
Barlow knew that new technology could create and empower evil as much as it could create and empower good. He made a conscious decision to focus on the latter: "I knew it's also true that a good way to invent the future is to predict it. So I predicted Utopia, hoping to give Liberty a running start before the laws of Moore and Metcalfe delivered up what Ed Snowden now correctly calls 'turn-key totalitarianism.'" Barlow's lasting legacy is that he devoted his life to making the Internet into "a world that all may enter without privilege or prejudice accorded by race, economic power, military force, or station of birth... a world where anyone, anywhere may express his or her beliefs, no matter how singular, without fear of being coerced into silence or conformity."
RIP John, your legacy lives on and continues to do good. May more of us leave that kind of a positive impact on the world we leave behind.
If you disagree, please post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like
I support EFF proudly and donate regularly, and have for years. If you depend on the Internet for any part of your livelihood, I encourage you to do the same. It wasn't invented to be a surveilled shopping mall. It's supposed to be for you, individually, to use as you will. EFF helps you in this effort.
Cloudiot: A person who does not see offsite storage as a way to lose control over access to his or her own data.
If you use Amazon Smile (smile.amazon.com) EFF is one of the charities that can receive donations from your Amazon purchases.
Lol! The fact that you can still troll is evidence that the "electronic frontier" is still very much alive. Enjoy being a coward about it.
Cloudiot: A person who does not see offsite storage as a way to lose control over access to his or her own data.
I liked what the EFF did until just a few years ago.
What REALLY gets me now is that there has been a regime change. If you flip through a copy of 2600, it's filled to the brim with politicized EFF trolls.
It is almost as though everything has been infiltrated by the fake NGO facade that struts around screaming at the sky over "evil Trump" as he pees in it instead of draining it, whereas the Bushbama regimes brought in gators and crawfish by the truckload and piped as many sewers as possible into it. So the administration "kills" Net Neuterality where they were trying to future-proof everything from some evil bogeyman that doesn't exist yet. And then they get hammered on by THIS TYPE for keeping the same government that keeps a record of every single one of your emails from increasing its powers one inch.
Sad.
A Little Light
Blown Away
We Can Run But We Can't HIde
Picasso Moon
I Will Take You Home
Gentlemen, Start Your Engines
Hell in a Bucket
Throwing Stones
My Brother Essau
Feel Like A Stranger
Lost Sailor
Saint of Circumstance
Easy to Love You
I Need a Miracle
Heaven Help the Fool
Estimated Prophet
Lazy Lightnin'
The Music Never Stopped
Finance Blues
Let It Grow (Weather Report II)
Black-Throated Wind
Walk in the Sunshine
Looks Like Rain
Cassidy
Mexicali Blues
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Here's an old TAL segment about him meeting the love of his life (at the time):
https://www.thisamericanlife.o...
I've run into John many times over the years. He was one of the tech industry's most colorful people. From the alcohol fueled parties at Comdex to the dusty plains of Black Rock City, John has been an iconic presence. He was one of the father's of modern technology. He will be so missed. He had much more to do too... it's really a shame his health got in the way. If you want to learn more about who he was, a great example of his brilliant writing is in his essay, "The Pursuit of Emptiness"
My first thought was that you were kidding (the founder of the EFF wrote for the Dead? huh?), but no... he apparently was a lyric writer for the Dead.
Huh.
Dude was eclectic!
EFF is still pretty solid.
Mozilla went totally globalist / Soros puppet.
"It was never intended to be used by individuals..."
Back then, I had friends at Tektronix who opposed the Internet becoming available to everyone.
Dot
The EFF has been taken over by the exact same people doing the surveilling. The EFF helps ID the people fighting against the surveillance (because they ask the EFF for help) and calls their employers claiming that they are alt-right nazis. EFF's Jillian C. York has gloated about this. Send your donations to anybody else, preferably someone who has gotten awful press from the likes of Gawker or the Daily Beast.
Here is one of the many stories that the EFF is probably not going to tell you about. Patreon just banned a journalist because he outed a pedophile ring inside Hasbro's Wizards of the Coast after WotC banned him for ridiculing their awful marketing stunts. That's the company that makes Magic: The Gathering. Only the #Gamergate people are talking about it. Try looking on EFF's website for any discussion of Unsleeved Media, Gamergate, Brett Kimberlin, PeterSweden, Charles C. Johnson, or any of the other big online censorship scandals of the past few years. You won't find the EFF talking about the stuff that matters. You are better off finding the people who are talking about this stuff and funding them.
...nuthin' left to do but smile, smile, smile.
yes, well aware of JPB and the gdead connection.
--
"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
I am curious. You are an asshole, who has no idea what he is talking about. A flamebait/troll, no doubt. But what I want to know is were you born like this, or was it something you had to work at?
RIP
He also sued the hell out of the oil and gas companies in Wyoming. They were ripping through fences, bulldozing roads through pastures etc. So he sued them. They laughed. Little did they realize they were up against a multi-millionaire who had made beau coup bucks as a rock star. The companies lost.
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
And we're supposed to feel sorry for the pedos, is that what you're saying?
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
Looks like someone's lost his host files and his meds...
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
Soros was 14 when the war ended. About a year older than you are now, I'm guessing.
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
I'd forgot about that. Thanks for the reminder.
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
"... but it seems to have spread now to every part of the world where industrial economy and the religion of science have taken deep root since Jefferson, Voltaire, Locke, and their other practical colleagues kicked it off a quarter millennium ago."
This would be better said as the religion of capitalism, not science. I think he missed the target on that one.
Modern science is virtually suffocating from lack of funds. And what little is expended on science is carefully monitored for potential patenting opportunities.
Bless you brother, we were blessed to have you among us.
You know, I just remembered I'm busy...
A good man whose work will continue! Godspeed!
Placing a "dot", or period, is a long-standing way of showing respect for someone who has passed. I tried doing this but the /. editor wouldn't let me. Probably did the same to this guy so he wrote the word "dot" out. I don't think he intended disrespect.
Closed, cleaned out (only used for keeping track of events), never had one.
Eat the rich.
You are just trolling but I am indeed concerned that a technolibertarian EFF was taken over by social justice warriors. That gets me really sad. With JP Barlow a legend has died and the new antiliberal brand will rewrite his legacy.
I remember when John laughed when Al Gore took credit for inventing the Internet. Obviously John was the real deal who actually contributed to the Internet.
Who needs privacy except for criminals? Net neutrality only hurts innovation. Fuck 'em.
JPB was on a TV show in about 2002 where he represented artists interests against the likes ot the RIAA and Napster. After the show, I emailed him about how many times I had purchased his, and others', music just to have it on different media (vinyl, cassette, CD), and that I had hoped that artists were not getting bypassed in royalties. Moreover, I mentioned that I felt that I had already paid the labels their due and would hope that I could just pay the artists now if I got music on new media. His reply was very cordial and he agreed with my position, even though there was no mechanism in place to do that at the time. RIP gentle man.
A life wasted on a futile battle that was over before one shot was even fired - and in the end none needed to be fired. It was clear from the start Big Money and Big Government would prevail. In time, we will wish the internet had never existed.
My first thought was that you were kidding (the founder of the EFF wrote for the Dead? huh?), but no... he apparently was a lyric writer for the Dead.
Huh.
Dude was eclectic!
As a longtime deadhead, I knew of him first as the lyricist who collaborated with Bob Weir on those songs. I had a similar reaction as you when I found out that he was the founder of EFF. Huh! Wow!
It warms my heart to see so many Slashdot friends from the old days commenting on this article. I first heard of Barlow and the EFF via Slashdot, back during the 1998 COPA protests. He helped open my eyes to the idea that the old laws for old technology were going to have unintended consequences when applied to new technology. He made me interested in activism, and his accomplishments still inspire me.
The internet has changed a lot since the late 90's, but the struggle between freedom and safety continues. May we never stop thinking about the consequences of going too far in either direction.
Your fantasies contain the seeds of important concepts.
That was the most important comment on this thread.
I met JP on the WELL, and within a couple of years we both had our soulmates plucked from us with zero warning just when things couldn't have been better. I figured our interactions would be technical, but the thing we connected on was as far from it as you could have imagined.