John Perry Barlow starts the dialogue explaining the reasons that led him to draw up and disclose his Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace, in Davos. He then discusses why he believes that people who use the term ‘intellectual property’ have got the wrong idea about it, and puts forward his ideas about frontiers in general and in particular the electronic frontier. He deliberates on whether the Economy of Ideas is capitalist, socialist or Marxist, and whether it should be supervised by someone or not. He also explains why cyberspace has still not been dominated by any world power, and explores the contradiction of why the differences between the rich and the poor have increased considerably since the onset of the global Internet revolution, what the cause of this is, and what has happened to all the hopes placed in the Internet by the underprivileged. Finally, he talks about how the structure of local cultures in cyberspace and their relationship with the global culture of the Internet is evolving.
Ethics and Law on the Electronic Frontier