Governments are the single point of failure for the internet and thusfor the public's tool of empowerment. We are seeing that in Egypt todayas the government ordered a shutdown of the internet as a wholein the country. We have seen that in the past when Libya shut down .lydomains it did not like. Our internet is too fragile.
I took some solace from Clay Shirky reminded me today that by the timegovernments shut down the internet or its services, it has so far beentoo late: the protestors are organized. I tweeted that and someoneresponded that the lesson for tyrants is: take care of the internetfirst, the protestors second.
The chicken-egg debate about the credit the tools of the internet andpublicness deserve in Iran and Tunisia and now Egypt is ratherpointless, even offensive. These tools were stolen from the public bya government trying to forbid them because they are a means ofshifting power. They do not belong to government. They belong to thepublic, who are using them to claim their rights as the public.
I am in Davos where, in 1996, John Perry Barlow wrote his
Governments of the Industrial World, you weary giants offlesh and steel, I come from Cyberspace, the new home of Mind. Onbehalf of the future, I ask you of the past to leave us alone. You arenot welcome among us. You have no sovereignty where we gather.
We have no elected government, nor are we likely to have one, so Iaddress you with no greater authority than that with which libertyitself always speaks. I declare the global social space we arebuilding to be naturally independent of the tyrannies you seek toimpose on us. You have no moral right to rule us nor do you possessany 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 liewithin your borders. Do not think that you can build it, as though itwere a public construction project. You cannot. It is an act of natureand it grows itself through our collective actions.
At a session here at Davos on governance in a new-media world (theirwords) we discussed the inevitability of greater transparency throughthese new tools and the need for principles to govern those who wouldgovern it. (I'll write more about that later.) This is why I amworking on my own suggestions for such a set. (
The first and most fundamental principle is that we have a right toconnect. Egypt violated that principle -- that human right -- today.
We, the people of the internet, the citizens of this eighth continent(as the CTO of the U.S. VA calls our newly discovered world) muststand in support of the disconnected of Egypt. I don't have theeloquence, passion, and credentials of Barlow, so I will not pretendto be able to respond to the call made by @jwildeboer
Yes, such a statement of support should come from each of us,particularly those of us here in Davos. This is mine. Yours?