Not Within Your Borders

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.  Governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed.  You have neither solicited nor received ours.  We did not invite you.  You do not know us, nor do you know our world.  Cyberspace does not lie within your borders.

-- John Perry Barlow (3 October 1947-), American poet, essayist, and co-founder of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace (1996)