The Internet was born without borders. Initially, this was due to purely technical reasons, to increase the efficiency and resilience of data transmissions. The “end-to-end principle” pushed innovation to the edges, eliminating points of control and empowering users to introduce new technologies and applications. Novel organizational models were organically conceived; the “rough consensus” deliberative method and the free software (open source) software licensing principle supported freedom and growth. The original Internet community took cultural and ideological pride in this design. Eventually, the first three decades of Internet history culminated in the “Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace,” an open challenge to nation-states and their concepts of jurisdiction and territory. The achievements of this new technical and social architecture were facilitated by the relatively small scale and cultural diversity of the community of the time, yet they set the stage for the profound, global impact of the Internet in the following decade.