At the Internet Archive for EFF’s John Perry Barlow Symposium

Just some random notes:

I have not seen the Internet Archive’s great hall (a former church) this full. All sorts of famous people are here. Ted Nelson, hypermedia pioneer, is sitting just a few feet from me.

Introductory remarks by the Internet Archive’s Brewster Kahle and the EFF’s Cindy Cohn. Cory Doctorow is delayed from the airport.

Some stories from his daughter. Very loving memories.

First panel: Cindy: He wanted to build the world he wanted to live in. He firmly put his marker down on the side of good. “Go to cyberspace for hope”. About Mitch Kapor: “Architecture is politics”.

Mitch: JPB quotes some EFF text from 1990 where he foresee how business and life all moved on-line, as we see it today, That was years before the first web browser.

Mitch: confirms that he indeed did divert his jet to stop by in Wyoming, as the story goes that JPB always told.

Pamela Samuelson: JPB made major contribution to copyright discussion in a 1994 Wired magazine article (must be this one), pointing out that existing copyright principles cannot apply to cyberspace.

Cory finally made it here, he’s talking about the importance of SecureDrop.

Trevor Timm explains how there was direct link between the launch of the Freedom of the Press Foundation and the revelations by Edward Snowden.

Who is now joining by video conference. Says “He was a man who actively sought discomfort, he could have stayed in bed”.

Snowden: “The legitimacy of government depends on the consent of the governed. The informed consent.” Which can’t be given if the information is not available.

Snowden is an unusually good speaker.

Q: Where did you (Mitch) and JPB disagree? A: Regulation (Mitch)

Mitch tells the story how he and JPB had an official visit at the CIA, and recorded the meeting because the CIA did not know what laptops at the time (I think he said Macintosh Duo) had now microphones built it, and so they didn’t think they were “recording devices”.