Opinion: I protest: It is not a merry May newtondailynews.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from newtondailynews.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
by Joel Schlosberg
February 8 marks the silver anniversary of an iconic early manifesto defending the Internet as a space where personal liberties and social cooperation might flourish free of political control … just in time. John Perry Barlow emailed “A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace” from the World Economic Forum the day Bill Clinton signed into law restraints on free expression via the Telecommunications Act of 1996.
Barlow couldn’t have foreseen that on February 2, 2021, The New York Times would print a call for incoming President Joe Biden to appoint a “reality czar” to verify online information. He did predict that national administrative substitutes for “parental responsibilities” would fail to contain “the virus of liberty” in “a world that will soon be blanketed in bit-bearing media.”