Part 1 of 3

(Godwin invented the notion of an internet meme, and was the attorney for the Electronic Frontier Foundation. Think John Perry Barlow. And currently works for the left wind R Street Institute.)

Michael Wayne Godwin (born October 26, 1956) is an American attorney and author. He was the first staff counsel of the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), and he created the Internet adage Godwin's law and the notion of an Internet meme, as reported in the October 1994 issue of Wired. From July 2007 to October 2010, he was general counsel for the Wikimedia Foundation. In March 2011, he was elected to the Open Source Initiative board. Godwin has served as a contributing editor of Reason magazine since 1994. In April 2019, he was elected to the Internet Society board. He is currently general counsel and director of innovation policy at the R Street Institute.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mike_Godwin

Part 2 of 3

Cyberspace has always been about more than just freedom - By Mike Godwin

What are the real values of cyberspace? Some pundits have raised this question, mostly but not always by implication, in the wake of John Perry Barlow’s death on February 7. Barlow, a Grateful Dead lyricist and co-founder of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, is frequently characterised as having been a Republican and/or a libertarian, although as I knew him his politics were not so easily reducible to any standard labels.

-

Barlow wasn’t the only founder of EFF, after all. Together with the software developer Mitch Kapor and open-source pioneer John Gilmore, Barlow co-founded EFF, which quickly became and arguably still is the most prominent organizational advocate of civil liberties and individual freedom and empowerment in cyberspace. Each of these three founders was more complex than any traditional label (like “libertarian” or “Republican” or “Democrat”), and each had an political vision that informed the choices EFF made early on when it came to championing cases, causes, law, and reform.

https://capx.co/cyberspace-has-always-been-about-more-than-just-freedom/