Re: Barlow Article in Wired

The current issue of WIRED features a (as usual, for WIRED) provocative article by John Perry Barlow dishing the utility of copyright principles for cyberspace. It should be read; does anyone who's read it have any comments for the list? For starters, I think he romanticizes, and misunderstands, the nature of digital communication, which he seems to characterize as approaching "pure thought" flying around the net: "voltage conditions darting around the Net at the speed of light, in conditions that one might behold in effect, as glowing pixels or transmitted sounds, but never touch or claim to 'own' in the old sense of the word." (A little tinkerbell here?) Since this is not an uncommon thread of thinking, and leads (in my view) in the wrong direction, comments from this group would be of interest.

John Garrett
<0004716758[_at_]mcimail.com>

ps Interesting, too, that Barlow's livelihood depends on IP. Received on Thu Mar 03 1994 - 14:22:33 GMT