Todd Brendan Fahey: Playing devil's advocate, You, John Barlow, pay taxes, vote and live in the United States of America . . .

John Perry Barlow: I have probably spent less time in the United States this year than outside of it, which seems to be increasingly my pattern.

Todd Brendan Fahey: But, the bottom line is, America is part of the Internet, the world is part of the Internet, but we abide by the laws of the United States. And this country, at least as codified in its Constitution, has some pretty incredible freedoms that aren't afforded to other places.

John Perry Barlow: Oh, actually, in my travels at the moment, I would say that the most repressive police state that I've visited in the past two years is the United States of America.

Todd Brendan Fahey: I'm not disagreeing in the slightest--but that's not Constitutional, per se.

John Perry Barlow: I think it was William O. Douglas who said: "The Constitution might not be perfect, but it's a lot better than what we have now." And that's absolutely right. The Constitution, especially the Bill of Rights, has been so damaged by, primarily, the War On Some Drugs, but also by a general assault over the course of this century, that I don't take much refuge in it. I would say that the First Amendment is still relatively strong, but I think the rest of the amendments have basically been gutted.

Todd Brendan Fahey: Is it not then better to bring to the American public's awareness and to politicians' awareness that we want desperately to return to the Constitution . . .

John Perry Barlow: But I don't think that's what the public wants, frankly. The reason why the Communications Decency Act did as well as it did, was because Congress was responding to market demands. What that percentage of the public that still votes in the United States is calling for, desperately, is shorter chains and smaller cages. And there's no question about that. In a sense, I have lost faith in democracy. Any time you have a democracy that is completely hallucinating, which this one is . . .

Todd Brendan Fahey: I hear you saying that a lot. Why don't you elaborate just a tiny bit?

John Perry Barlow: Well, hallucinatory democracy is what you've got when you've got persons forming opinions almost exclusively on the basis of media that are motivated dysfunctionally to paint a completely distorted picture of the world. And I'm not talking about a massive conspiracy; I'm talking about the fact that there is a simple, natural algorithm at work here--which is, that the broadcast media live on the attention of the audience and sell the attention of the audience to the advertisers. And, if you're trying to harvest attention, you have a strong interest in fertilizing it; if you're trying to fertilize attention, you have a strong interest in presenting a picture of the world that is going to be quite different from the one that most people experience. So, you've got a large percentage of society who are in a state of panic about problems they've never experienced and which do not actually exist.

Todd Brendan Fahey: Kiddie porn?

John Perry Barlow: Yes. And if you hear politicians, in a democracy, you have no choice but to respond to the wishes of the people, even when the people have gone nuts. Otherwise, you're going to get defeated.

Todd Brendan Fahey: OK, we can't trust the politicians and the people have gone mad.

John Perry Barlow: Yes!

Todd Brendan Fahey: Let me press you to a hypothetical extreme, that might not be too extreme after the April Court ruling. Let's say that the Court comes down in favor of Net censorship, and let's say the stipulations are fairly rigid, and that they affect more than just a preventative measure against minors accessing porn. Where does that leave the active, engaged anarchist such as yourself?

John Perry Barlow: Well, that leaves us in a position of considerable moral responsibility. This will require some courage, but we have to focus our energies on making sure the Net stays open by technical and cultural means that are within our own making. We have to make certain that if there is material that may be proscribed by any government, anywhere, that there are other ways of storing that material that are without the jurisdiction of that government; we have to start using encryption for a lot of our communications; but, more than anything else, we have to be brave. I've always felt that liberty is a matter of its own exercise. You are as free as you're willing to be. You can do whatever your conscience will permit, until somebody stops you. And I think we have to think hard about our conscience, and then we have to do what we feel is right. And if we become fearful, if we play into the hands of these authoritarians, we'll destroy, I think, the future of humanity in a fundamental way. Because the future of humanity depends, and this is not an exaggeration, on the Internet remaining an open environment for discourse.

Todd Brendan Fahey: It seems that the conscience, it can be argued, of the public, whether they're hallucinating or whether they're seeing something you don't see . . .

John Perry Barlow: Well, it's not simply a matter of seeing things that I don't see. They have, for example, a perception that a terrible crime wave is sweeping this country. And in addition to the fact that I don't experience it--and I go to places where I might--the statistics from the FBI and local police departments don't bear it out.

Todd Brendan Fahey: On the flip side, as a representative democracy, at least in theory, people of this country were able to challenge the constitutionality of the CDA. There is a perception that morals, with a capital "M" prevail over liberty. I mean, what do we do about this perception?

John Perry Barlow: Well, we take what little refuge the Constitution still provides; We spend a lot of time in court. We . . . well . . .

Todd Brendan Fahey: It's a tough one, huh?

John Perry Barlow: And we take our freedom into our own hands. I mean, we behave like free people until somebody comes along and stops us. And if the entire society declares its own liberty, it makes it very difficult for the persons in control to tell it otherwise. I also think there is something inherently liberating about getting on the Internet. There has been demonstrated a cultural infection in Internet use that is more powerful than the infections that others bring to it. And I place a great deal of faith in what's going to happen in society when more people are online and fewer people are watching television.

The views expressed above represent the writer and not necessarily those of The Disinformation Company Ltd.