lawrence lessig code and other laws of cyberspace

It is precisely this situation in which Harvard law professor Lawrence Lessig believes we find ourselves.

By viewing governmental power as the primary threat to liberty, autonomy, and dignity, they’d blind themselves to the real threats?threats that it may require government to block or remedy. The expansion of e-commerce and the movement of much of our public discourse to the online world will increase our freedom both as citizens and as consumers.īut what if each of these premises is at best incomplete and at worse false or misleading? (Leave aside the likelihood that they’re not entirely consistent with one another.) What if the architecture of the Net can be changed by government and the dynamism of e-commerce? What if the very developments that enhance electronic commerce also undermine political freedom and privacy? The result might be that engineers and activists who are concerned about preserving democratic values in cyberspace were focusing their efforts in the wrong direction.The structure of the Internet?the “architecture” of cyberspace, if you will?is politically neutral and cannot easily be manipulated by government or special interests.The proper way to guarantee liberty is to limit the role of government and to prevent government from acting foolishly with regard to the Internet.The Internet does not lend itself to regulation by governments.Although there would be lots of heated discussion and no unanimity on any single belief, you might find a majority could get behind something like the following four premises:

Imagine that you could somehow assemble the pioneers of the Internet and the first political theorists of cyberspace in a room and poll them as to what beliefs they have in common. It’s interesting to view this review through the lens of the past 20 years of history that we now have lived through. Given the importance of these issues today, we’re republishing a moderately updated version of Godwin’s original 1999 review. When the original book was published, in 1999, Mike Godwin wrote a review for a long defunct journal called E-Commerce Law Weekly. Both versions are classics and important pieces of the history of the internet - and are especially interesting to look at now that issues of how much “code” is substituting as “law” have become central to so many debates.

A few years later, he put out a very updated version called Code 2.0. Twenty years ago, Larry Lessig published the original version of his book Code and Other Laws of Cyberspace.

Lawrence lessig code and other laws of cyberspace