John Perry (2016)

>Since I have to ask a question, ok: did you really try to stop Bobby from singing Victim or the Crime, and if so, why? It doesn't really matter, but that rumor has been out there for years, so there you go.

No I didn't. I wish I thought that would have been possible. But trying to stop Bobby from doing anything is the best way to ensure that he will go on doing it. I mean, check out his mustache.

I don’t know how to limit speech on the Internet, that’s the issue. I don’t know a way to limit one form of speech, without limiting any form of speech. Besides, as John Stuart Mill said, liberty resides in the rights in that person’s views which you find most odious. And if you can’t defend the expressions that trouble you, you’ll have a hard time defending your own when they trouble someone else.

I don’t believe we’ve been successful in identifying and addressing these issues ourselves. I was too optimistic. However, there was a calculated quality to my optimism. I knew that the Internet, in addition to being the greatest engine of freedom of expression in the history of humanity, was also going to be the most penetrating tool of surveillance and oppression ever devised.

I believed at the time—and I still believe—that it made better sense to put some spin on the ball in the direction of the positive aspects of the Internet, so that we didn’t go into cyberspace terrified of where we were headed, but went there with a sense of hope and progress. And I’ll stick with that now.

No, in a word. I mean, have you heard any of these guys say anything about the Internet? As far as I can tell they don’t even know it exists. I mean, Bernie kind of does. Hillary only does insofar as she made a terrible mistake online.

There are a lot of candidates for my favorite Dead song. At present I would say “The Days Between,” though I’m also very fond of “Black Peter.” As for the sweetest memories I have of Jerry and Brent: I have so many memories of them, sweet and not so sweet, that I could write a book about it. Given that everyone else has written such a book, I’ll probably forgo that. But I knew them both very well and I miss them very much each day.

I don’t know when the cowboy project is going to come to fruition. I’m a little baffled why it’s considered “the cowboy project” given its constituents. Though he did finally loop in me and Lucas Nelson, two people with actual cowboy credentials.

What advice would I give people who are apathetic to the political process? Well, you will get the government that you don’t resist. If you don’t care how you’re governed, then I’d say stay out of the political process. I understand the sense of futility that many feel, and I often feel it myself, but democracy requires hope. And apathy is a cowardly retreat.

I'm pretty okay today! Though it's been a long struggle.

As for Balkanization, I seem to think the more data they collect, the less information they have. And we can expect them to be even more incompetent in the future.

On the lack of copyright reform: I didn't expect to see copyright reform. The content cabal seized Congress and the courts clear back in the '80s, and has spent an enormous amount of money getting them to believe a narrative that is counterproductive even for those who are trying to distribute expression. Though somewhat productive for those who prey on those who express. This will be a very long evolution but I predict we will eventually come up with a method for monetizing for the work we do with our minds that is based on a service model rather than a property model.

And I don't believe the wild land of cyberspace is getting lesser and lesser free. I just think it's freedom is having to go deeper and deeper. And there is a lot of depth beneath the surface of the Internet.

Parker is right about this.

The way I got online originally was because I wanted to study the Deadheads. And I got an internet account in 1985 so that I could observe interaction on rec.music.gdead and once I was there I realized that there was a lot more going on than another version of the Grateful Dead parking lot. So I owed a lot to the early online Deadheads for leading me on the path that I’ve been on ever since.

If I were writing it today, I would make it much more clear that the Internet and the physical world are deeply connected in the same way that the mind and body are connected. It's been fashionable to attack what I wrote on the grounds that I thought cyberspace was sublimely removed from the physical world.

I would also be less optimistic in my sense that social contracts would arise in cyberspace that would take care of most of the difficulties that arose there. However the fact that they have not in some cases, doesn't mean that government somehow has the right or the ability to go in and do it.

We’re still having a hard time recognizing that the Internet is continuous, and that it is almost impossible to balkanize it. There have been many efforts to do so and some of them have marginally succeeded, as in China. But none of them have succeeded in the long run.

I don’t see any reason to counter it. If people don’t think they have anything to hide, let them not hide anything. Privacy works, whether everybody signs on for it or not.

If on the other hand they’re trying to weaken efforts to maintain privacy on the part of those who want it, then that is an imposition that is transgressive. And a violation.

The battle to keep the Internet free is continuous. And it will be continuous for the rest of our lives. It’s so far been a Mexican standoff between the forces of oppression and the forces of liberation. I don’t see any reason to think that this stalemate will break any time soon. So it’s necessary to very actively engage with organizations like EFF, and support them, and to be very conscious of the issues on those occasions when they actually arise in Congress.

I also believe that if you are technically capable, you have a moral responsibility to understand the architecture of the Internet so that you can be helpful in attending to design changes that will make it more robust, since the real safety is and always has been the architecture of cyberspace.

Policies that support a borderless cyberspace are the only policies that will work in maintaining the integrity of the Internet. If it appears that their employees are at risk, then I would say that they either need to move out of that country or they need to move the employee out of that country.

Reeling in Mitch Kapor would take tackle of the sort I cannot imagine.

I am happy that CDT and EPIC are separate from EFF. They have different cultures, a different focus, a different location, and to some degree are more a part of the “inside baseball” game that is played in Washington, DC. EFF decided that there was no way you could be in DC without getting too much pig fat on you.

I don’t have space or time to address the Eric Eldred case. It’s too complicated.

Well, my main thoughts are just that it was a completely improper decision. That it was wrong. That they didn’t know what they were doing and they made a serious mistake. But both the courts and the legislators have been in the pocket of the content industry for a long time. Fortunately there’s a whole generation of young people that don’t buy into that.

I used to be a beatnik long ago. Neal Cassidy, whom I knew and whose birthday it is today, was my god.

Yeah, I believe that it would be great if there were a general awareness of the importance of privacy. But over the years I’ve noticed the trend heading in precisely the opposite direction. People care less and less about their privacy. Their real desire is to be seen. And they don’t feel threatened by being seen, generally. So efforts to get them to become invisible, I think, are doomed to fail. (With the exception of John Gilmore. But given the fact that John Gilmore lives with me, and I’m the most public person I know, he’s completely failed.)

No, I get my WinRAR free.

I don’t see that it’s any different from the Communications Decency Act! It’s the same foolish mistake. They don’t get it.

Of course! I was instrumental in helping Americans get strong encryption. And I live with one of the great cypherpunks, John Gilmore.

I believe that encrypted transmission over the network is likely to become standard, driven partly by the major network providers who would rather not have the responsibility of surveilling their customers.

I would love to see the mashups of the Declaration that were done around SOPA - I never saw any. If you have any links, I would appreciate it!

The principle force of my Declaration lies in the extent to which it speaks for others, who want the internet to be open and free. It’s not something that requires military force, in fact, military force would be completely irrelevant. It’s something that requires individual commitment and a willingness of the part of people to go ahead and speak freely even when they feel like there is some risk attached to doing so. Liberty lies in its exercise, and this is true whether you’re a lawyer or a web developer.

I don’t believe that I can address your question fairly at this moment. I would say, however, that I go on believing that property is a very bad way to understand things that can be infinitely reproduced. other forms of property are limited or finite. SO called intellectual property is infinite. I would also stick by what I said about the slippery nature of identity. I believe that anonymity, or obscured identity is fairly easily obtained for those who need it (however I recommend strongly against using it if you don’t need it because without identity there’s no accountability). It is also difficult to ascertain the location of a person if that person is technically capable and does not want his or her whereabouts to be known.