Electronic Frontier Foundation co-founder has passed away

Internet activist and founder of the Electronic Frontier Foundation and Freedom of the Press John Perry Barlow died in his sleep on Wednesday at the age of 70. Barlow has been committed to a free internet since the 1990s.

According to the EFF, it is no exaggeration to say that large parts of the Internet today exist in their current form thanks to Barlow’s vision. “He saw the Internet as a place of freedom, where voices long stifled can find an audience and connect people regardless of physical distance,” writes Cindy Cohn, who worked with Barlow at the EFF for 27 years.

In 1986, Barlow became involved with the Internet community The Well. On the Bulletin Board System, he wrote how in 1990 he was approached by an FBI agent, without any technical knowledge, about the theft of source code from Macintosh ROMs. His report was read by Mitch Kapor, creator of Lotus 1-2-3, who had experienced something similar.

In the conversations that followed, they discussed how the intelligence services disregarded civil rights in tackling cybercrime and how hackers who were the victims of this needed legal support. In doing so, they laid the foundations of what would become the Electronic Frontier Foundation in 1990. In his report on the founding, Barlow gives an example of how a company’s infrastructure was seized because it wanted to release a game called Cyberpunk, which according to the intelligence services was “a handbook for computer crime.” Steve Wozniak and Jon Gilmore of Sun, among others, supported the establishment of the EFF with knowledge and resources.

Barlow remained involved with the foundation throughout his life and in 2012 was a driving force behind the founding of the Freedom of the Press Foundation, known for its support for Edward Snowden and Aaron Swartz, among others.