Happy birthday Electronic Frontier Foundation

Die Electronic Frontier Foundation feiert heute ihren 25. Geburtstag. Am 10. Juli 1990 veröffentlichten Mitchell Kapor und John Perry Barlow dieses Mission Statement:

A new world is arising in the vast web of digital, electronic media which connect us. Computer-based communication media like electronic mail and computer conferencing are becoming the basis of new forms of community. These communities without a single, fixed geographical location comprise the first settlements on an electronic frontier.

While well-established legal principles and cultural norms give structure and coherence to uses of conventional media like newspapers, books, and telephones, the new digital media do not so easily fit into existing frameworks. Conflicts come about as the law struggles to define its application in a context where fundamental notions of speech, property, and place take profoundly new forms. People sense both the promise and the threat inherent in new computer and communications technologies, even as they struggle to master or simply cope with them in the workplace and the home.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation has been established to help civilize the electronic frontier; to make it truly useful and beneficial not just to a technical elite, but to everyone; and to do this in a way which is in keeping with our society’s highest traditions of the free and open flow of information and communication.

To that end, the Electronic Frontier Foundation will:

Engage in and support educational activities which increase popular understanding of the opportunities and challenges posed by developments in computing and telecommunications.
Develop among policy-makers a better understanding of the issues underlying free and open telecommunications, and support the creation of legal and structural approaches which will ease the assimilation of these new technologies by society.
Raise public awareness about civil liberties issues arising from the rapid advancement in the area of new computer-based communications media. Support litigation in the public interest to preserve, protect, and extend First Amendment rights within the realm of computing and telecommunications technology.
Encourage and support the development of new tools which will endow non-technical users with full and easy access to computer-based telecommunications.

Das ist ihnen auch gut gelungen. Vor neun Jahren hab ich mal einen Netzpolitik-Podcast mit John Perry Barlow u.a. zur Gründung der EFF aufgenommen.

Happy birthday und weiterhin viel Erfolg an der US-amerikanischen Front.

Funfact: Der Chaos Computer Club ist älter.