BANGALORE: John Perry Barlow is a tireless crusader for Internet freedom. Nearly 11 years after his last visit to India, the legendary American poet and essayist is back on a "different mission" but is happy to talk about his original mission of defending the freedom of Internet.
Especially in the backdrop of governments trying to regulate internet across the world. Barlow spoke exclusively to ET on the state of Internet freedom and how the Indian government's attempts to control the Internet is a "stupid" act.
One of Barlow's earliest crusade in favour of Net freedom came in the form of an influential paper, A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace. He wrote: "Governments of the Industrial World, you weary giants of flesh and steel, I come from Cyberspace, the new home of Mind. On behalf of the future, I ask you of the past to leave us alone. You are not welcome among us. You have no sovereignty where we gather."
This set much of base for net freedom. Barlow founded the Electronic Frontier Foundation that advocated that Internet should be self governed -- not ruled by governments or corporations. India is facing criticism after it proposed to regulate content on blogs and set out to amend the existing rules that govern the Internet. Barlow says holding a blogger responsible for a comment on his blog is like holding someone, who made a comment in your living room, responsible.
"That's just stupid," he shrugs and asks, "What else are they doing?" "It is the usual problem where you have a bunch of people who don't know the environment trying to protect you from things that might go wrong in it. And trying to impose themselves in the ways they can't," he says India has also been concerned about use of online communication and technology by terrorist groups.
Barlow says, "People should think more about why people commit terrorist acts. People do it because they feel they are completely frustrated with any kind of political process. They feel powerless. Making people feel more powerless doesn't strike me as a good way to make them not commit terrorist act."
"While Internet is the greatest tool for expression that has ever been, it is also the greatest tool for surveillance," he adds. According to Barlow, the "inevitable conflicts" that crop up at the borders of the physical world and the cyberspace when the Internet first arrives.
According to him, even in a country like the US, where internet penetration and use is higher, Wikileaks produced an extreme reaction from the government because they felt an "instinctive terror" when they are not in control of their own information. The biggest threat to the freedom of Internet, however, is overzealous protection of copyright, he says.
"It is far more critical than any other things that I worry about. It doesn't make sense to put a price on the bottle when you don't have a price on the wine," he added. Internet freedom aside, Barlow is in India on a different mission this time. "I'm planning an enterprise which will come up with ways to produce fuel for people who don't have it." He is in talks with Indian companies to devise small and affordable fuel systems. "I'm not trying to take on oil companies over night. But I want people to have an alternative," he says.
