-Caveat Lector- <A HREF="http://www.ctrl.org/"> </A> -Cui Bono?- from: http://www.zolatimes.com/V4.3/independ_cyberspace.htm Click Here: <A HREF="http://www.zolatimes.com/V4.3/independ_cyberspace.htm">Th e Independence of Cyberspace, by Zola</A> ----- The Independence of Cyberspace by Zola John Perry Barlow declared the independence of cyberspace. Laissez Faire City took the idea and ran with it. Laissez Faire City moved into the free, independent frontier of cyberspace and declared itself a sovereign city. How do you establish an independent city in the physical world? You control a territory and defend its borders. How do you establish an independent city in cyberspace? You control a territory and defend its borders. In cyberspace, borders are defended by computer security. Laissez Faire City is a sovereign territory by virtue of its secure communications grid. And because Laissez Faire City is a sovereign city, it has declared the right to issue corporate charters within its domain. Many people think that corporations are an exclusive product of the nation-state, or one of its subdivisions, such as the State of Delaware or the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. Not so. Corporations were originally a mechanism by which private associations carried on their affairs and held property corporately (as a body). Of course, worldly powers found such associations a source of competition, and tried to control them. The Roman emperors, for example, declared that no collegia (private associations) could be founded without state authority. Modern corporations emerged during the Elizabethan era in England. The Queen granted one group of investors the right to form the East India Company, with a trading monopoly in its territories, and the authority to make and enforce laws. Later, the crown granted similar charters to other groups, such as the one to develop Virginia in the New World as a royal domain, along with the right to create a military and coin money. Comparable rights were granted to William Penn's "Free Society of Traders" in Pennsylvania and to the "Governor and Company of the Massachusetts Bay in New England." Laissez Faire City does not recognize the authority of the crown or that of any nation-state. Rather, Laissez Faire City is itself sovereign, and therefore grants its own charters—corporate and otherwise. The City's virtual corporations are true "sovereign citizens." They are empowered to conduct business and hold property within Laissez Faire City. Let me be clear. Laissez Faire City does not exist and exercise authority by virtue of some obscure legal doctrine. Rather, the City exists by an act of life, will, and defiance. The City exists. The City is sovereign. And you had better respect the City's borders. Now, all this might not have been in John Perry Barlow's mind when he wrote his Declaration of Independence of Cyberspace, in Davos, Switzerland, February 8, 1996. But he said what needed to be said: We have no elected government, nor are we likely to have one, so I address you with no greater authority than that with which liberty itself always speaks. I declare the global social space we are building to be naturally independent of the tyrannies you seek to impose on us. You have no moral right to rule us nor do you possess any methods of enforcement we have true reason to fear. One enters the frontier of cyberspace to escape tyranny and arbitrary authority, but not to abandon civilization. One of history's oldest recorded civilizations was that of Sumer, lying between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers in Mesopotamia, and perhaps extending beyond their confluence to today's Persian Gulf. The Sumerians called their country ken.gi(r), or "civilized land." The Sumerians founded the first City States, and may have invented writing. They used a type of picture writing, called cuneiform ("wedge shaped"), which was written on clay tablets using long reeds. Laissez Faire City has similarly founded the first civilized city of cyberspace. Its written language is binary, which is a series of 0s and 1s recorded on various electronic media. The Sumerians created their own laws and literature, giving rise to the Epic of Gilgamesh and the later (Babylonian) Code of Hammurabi. I suppose Laissez Faire City will get around to all that, also. Hopefully more literature than laws. But for the moment it is preoccupied with securing its borders. For there's nothing more civilized than a peaceful night's sleep as a free individual. Sweet dreams, my little binaries. -30- from The Laissez Faire City Times, Vol 4, No 3, January 17, 2000 ----- Aloha, He'Ping, Om, Shalom, Salaam. Em Hotep, Peace Be, All My Relations. Omnia Bona Bonis, Adieu, Adios, Aloha. Amen. 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