"A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace" was an influential early paper on the applicability (or lack thereof) of government on the rapidly-growing internet. It was written by John Perry Barlow, a founder of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, and published online February 8, 1996 from Davos, Switzerland.

The Declaration sets out, in sixteen short paragraphs, a rebuttal to government of the Internet by any outside force, specifically the United States. It states that the United States did not have the consent of the governed to apply laws to the Internet, and that the Internet was outside any country's borders. Instead, the Internet was developing its own social contracts to determine how to handle its problems, based on the golden rule. It does this in language evocative of the United States Declaration of Independence