John Perry Barlow (born October 3, 1947, near Pinedale, Wyoming, U.S.—died February 7, 2018, San Francisco, California) was an American author, lyricist, and cyberspace activist who cofounded (1990) the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), which sought to protect the rights and freedoms of individuals in the digital world.
Barlow spent his childhood on his family’s cattle ranch in Wyoming, and he later attended Fountain Valley School of Colorado, where he became friends with Bob Weir, future guitarist for the Grateful Dead. He then studied at Wesleyan University, graduating with a degree in comparative religion in 1969. In 1971 Barlow began writing lyrics for the Grateful Dead, and with Weir he later penned such songs as “Cassidy” and “Mexicali Blues.” That year Barlow returned to Wyoming, and after his father died in 1972, he ran the family cattle ranch until 1988, when it was sold.
In the late 1980s Barlow began using the Internet, and he became a frequent poster at The WELL, an online community. It discussed a variety of topics—Grateful Dead fans were frequent users, which was what originally drew Barlow to the community—and in 1990 he began posting about the U.S. Secret Service’s series of raids that were intended to combat computer hacking. Believing that people’s constitutional rights were being violated, Barlow—together with Mitch Kapor and John Gilmore—founded the EFF. Its first major case involved Steve Jackson Games, which the Secret Service alleged was the recipient of an illegally copied computer file relating to BellSouth’s 911 emergency system. Agents seized several of the firm’s computers, and although they were eventually returned, some data had been deleted. The EFF provided legal aid, and in 1993 the court ruled that Jackson’s rights had been violated. The EFF was later involved with a number of cases, dealing with such issues as music copyright, trademark law, and anonymity relating to cyberspace.
Among Barlow’s extensive writings about the Internet is a 1990 essay in which he used the word cyberspace—taken from William Gibson’s science-fiction novels—to describe the Internet; that essay is credited with being the first such use of the word. He was an early contributor to Wired magazine, in which he published “The Economy of Ideas” (1994), a hugely influential article in which he argued that the nature of digital information and the Internet made traditional intellectual property and copyright laws obsolete. Following the passage of the controversial Communications Decency Act (1996), which attempted to place prohibitions on Internet speech in various ways, Barlow wrote the widely disseminated “A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace,” in which he argued that cyberspace should be freed from outdated notions of property, expression, and identity. (Portions of the act were later struck down in various legal challenges.)
In 1997 Barlow was a fellow at the Institute of Politics at Harvard. The following year he became a fellow at the university’s law school.