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Author (or Editor): Lessig, Lawrence |
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Title: CODE and Other Laws of Cyberspace |
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Fiction? Anthology? |
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Publisher: Basic Books |
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Date: 1999 |
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ISBN: ISBN 0-465-03912-X |
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Series Name: |
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Physical description: hardbound 297 pages, inc. index |
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Relevance to doaskdotell: |
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Lessig is a Professor at That is to say, while the Internet and cyberspace have the
reputation of having become a new "Wild Wild West" (in the
spirit of the goofy 1999 film), in fact the architectures and code of
cyberspace may, given the way we have tied our personal and corporate
expressions to it, impose a regulation of customary "law" upon us
every bit as controversial as the world of positive and common law (or, for
that matter, the "natural laws" of physics) in the physical world. For indeed, cyberspace gives up alternate "avatar
spaces" (almost in the sense of a mathematical measure space or
topological space) or "universes" to live in. And these spaces give us inorganic ways to
instantiate ourselves such that our dependence upon committed and not always
chosen personal relationships indeed diminishes (as with the introverted
character played by Sandra Bullock in the 1995 techno-thriller The Net!). We transcend ourselves with virtual
realities: remember the 1979 Disney film Tron
("users are what our programs are for!"). Indeed, I'm reminded of
an essential paradox of my own homosexuality: feeling "turned on"
by the part-objects and symbols of the physical world, as if they could copy
themselves into the new imaginary dominions of cyberspace or any other future
alien worlds. For example, Then, Lessig writes
"'Libertarian'" … associates with arguments against government.
Government in the modern libertarian's view, is the
threat to liberty; private action is not." (Indeed, Gays and Lesbians for
Individual Liberty supports the Boy Scouts in Dale v. BSA!) But, in the view of John Stuart Mill,
"liberty… was threatened as much by norms as by government, as much by
stigma and intolerance as by the threat of state punishment." And then, "my argument is that
cyberspace teaches a new threat to liberty… We care coming to understand a
powerful new regulator in cyberspace, and we don't yet understand how best to
control it." The
"obvious" threat is monitoring people's use of the Net, with
cookies or with perhaps government planted "worms." (And employers or lenders might be tempted
to screen potential "clients" for their own personal Internet
sites, surfing and chat habits, although this can be
met by using fictitious screen names and would not work with names like
"John Smith.") But indeed,
the cyberworld gives people a chance to shoot
themselves in the foot. Transmit one
"terroristic threat" in a chat room, thinking you are joking, and
the FBI may haul you out of bed at On one level, the question becomes, does law need to
change because of Cyberspace? Will the
principles of the First Amendment stand up reliably on their own? My own friends in the legal-libertarian
community seem to feel it should, but I can pose many more questions of my
own here, as I have elsewhere on this site. Government, in fact, could have many superficial
opportunities to regulate the Internet, as with licensing, sales taxes,
credentialing. Lessig points this out on page
50. And government has tried to
respond to the pervasiveness of the Internet in a manner roughly like what it
faced fifty years ago with television (and not a whole lot better than when
Europeans faced the printing press and in fact when the Chinese had around
1100 AD). We can justify a lot of
rules in the name of "protecting children." First there was the Communications Decency
Act ( Another broad area of argument is intellectual property
law, and Lessig does not take this as far as he
could. He does elaborate on copyright
law, and the importance of the "fair use" doctrine which he
maintains to help authors collectively but not always individually.
(Actually, "fair use" does not determine that one may review a book
without permission; the actual coverage of the copyright law does.) He does not seem to pay much heed to workplace
issues, where employees are first shocked to learn that employers have the
legal right to snoop on their use of workplace computers, and even in some
cases their computers at home (as when there is suspicion of illegal strikes
or sickouts with Northwest Airlines or of misusing trade secrets). And it gets more complicated when the
worker telecommutes, uses his own computer for "work work" or when
the employer provides his computer at home, or when the employee uses a free
Internet email (like hotmail) displaying it at work but by logging in to
another company's server. And, here, I want to go on and suggest that the issues
posed by the Net are subtle, a blend of layers of law and ethics that we
constantly uncover like the levels of the Jovian atmosphere. Remember, the Internet has made the world
one big database (hence the concept of "open systems"). An individual with an idea can promote
himself, unsupervised, on the Internet with completely untested business
paradigms, all of which may have legal consequences. The most obvious example of a
"problem" is familiar to investors: how much should a stock (say,
of any IPO) for a company that won't make a profit for a few years? But the deeper problem has to do with the
relationships between individuals, small entities and larger more trusted
companies and organizations. For
example, an individual can set up a web server and hosting service; but if he
is not up to speed and leaves his machine open to hackers, he could become a
liability to larger organizations "victimized" when his machine is
used as a zombie in a DDOS "Distributed Denial of Service" attack.
(Regular password protection is not enough to defend, say, against
"buffer overflow" attacks, so a web operator or even a Or what about my own paradigm for doaskdotell.com? I don’t make a living at it; I still work
in a salaried capacity. I do it to build "publicity rights," a
national reputation which I hope to convert into financial gain later. So I
may myself look on the Net (and in bookseller's catalogs) like a "real
company" even though I have no employees and little overhead. My audience ("SQL count" of
people familiar with my writings) is now very comparable to those of much
better known and established authors, as I can tell from server logs. With a
little thought, one can see how some people could object. (May one rightfully work for someone else
and still claim his "publicity rights" which in some sense "pervasively"
encroach upon the privacy of all other entities associated with the speaker?
People used to quit work and live off their savings in order to
"write" and, by the way, you don't send books to publishers! And a quick "relationship" between
James Lear, played by Tobey Maguire, and a book publisher editor [not the
professor played by Michael Douglas] in Wonder Boys (2000, Paramount)
gives one an idea of how some people 'get published.') I must interpret and build upon the stories
of others, avoid appearance of conflict of interest at work (the idea that
private information could be misappropriated or that there is a
"hidden" tip in my postings; there isn't!) and maintain quality
control (the typos in that first book are a problem!) But, do it I must, for I find that most sensitive
political and psychological issues (especially their "junction")
don't get covered very well by conventional means. Traditional trade book publishing, with its
emphasis on editing, typesetting and manufacturing perfection so well
documented in The Chicago Manual of Style, is still too expensive and
sluggish to keep up with issues with the subtlety I want to see (on issues
like gays in the military). Political
organizations, caucuses and pressure groups are simply too adversarial to
present the public a balanced perspective.
Even the best of these water down their material to appeal to the
"average person" on the basis of emotion rather than reason (and
their leadership resents competition).
Individuals can be so much more nimble, in building and publishing
intellectual contexts by which companies, organizations, and interest groups
will be publicly perceived. So I turn
not to the courts or to the political process but to the Net and build my
intellectual symphony, with bug conceptual pieces like movements, to fall
back on themselves like the Schumann Second. But, then again, the Net offers easy use of
pseudonyms! (Not uncommon in
conventional publishing the past with new writers, like Bachman for Stephen
King). But, can a commentator be believed
if he doesn't used his own name? And, as Lessig
points out, the Net could provide the structures and voluntary rating
mechanisms to score the "credibility" of individual speakers when
compared to larger, established organizations. Anyone can set themselves up as a “.com,” mimicking a
larger “legitimate” (??) business in front of a worldwide audience and
creating the expectation of larger-business customer service levels. We may find that the domain naming
structure eventually does encourage new business practices in
employment. Companies (especially
those selling consulting services and using resumes to "get
business") may not be willing to allow employees (at least certain key
exempt employees or officers) to run their own ".com" domains (or they
might insist that these persons remain brokered independent contractors), and
people might be expected to use subdomains (as Indeed, the Internet (and recall that the National Science
Foundation only turned this loose in 1992) offers curious paradoxes in the
whole workplace paradigm. Older
mainframe operating systems were based upon the notion of separation of
functions, batch processing, and procedural scheduling. New open systems are based upon control by
the customer, even at home; but they have created a curious new discipline in
the workplace. It is sometimes written
in computer journals that older "grizzled" (Y2K COBOL) programmers
have trouble learning the "sexy new languages," but that is more
because the newer systems really are build from the grassroots by mostly
younger people who like to tinker and to build computers for themselves, and
yet must impose unheard of discipline in their code and work habits to make
their code reusable, inheritable (as in Java) and totally
self-documenting. In fact, the object-orientation system design techniques
used by open systems (in languages like Java, PowerBuilder, SmallTalk, C++), provide a paradigm for understanding the
controversies over emerging individualism.
A behavior (or an "object") may have no immediate harmful
effects, until the context from which it inherits its properties is
applied. The benefit of a particular behavior implies that some paradigm must
have been applied at a higher level, which burdens other descendents. And so
it goes. So Law is on the
start of it. The revised version of this book is “Code Version 2.0” (2006, Basic Books, ISBN 0-465-03914-6, 410
pages, paper). The book quickly takes up the idea that it is easier to
identify visitors that one thinks, and proposes a simplified content labeling
system (without PICS) as a solution to the “COPA Problem”. Blogger. This is a good place to mention Thierer,
Adam and Crews, Clyde Wayne, Jr. Editors. Copy Fights: The Future of Intellectual Property in the
Information Age. Jonathan Zittrain wrote a long article, “Without a Net: The
Internet is vulnerable to viruses so lethal that they could gravely damage
the online world—unless we upgrade law and technology now” in Legal Affairs, Jan-Feb. 2006. The
main threat is a new destructive worm spreading catastrophically before
anti-virus companies can catch it. Zittrain
discusses the idea of licensing programmers and licensing the software that
they create – an anathema to libertarians, except that this would be done by
software vendors and distributors—which could expose contributors to business
prejudices and to turf protection. An author whose software included a virus
would lose his license. (Could this concept apply to general content creators
like me?) He discusses concepts like
end-to-end neutrality, which places more responsibility on untrained endusers than is desirable, and encouraging ISPs to take
more responsibility for quarantining zombies themselves, which they are often
loath to do. On Sue Scheff and John W. Dozier. Google Bomb: The Untold Story of the $11.3M Verdict that Changed the Way We Use the Internet”. Deerfield, FL, Heath Communications, 2009, 248 pages, paper. ISBN 0-7573-1415-5. With Foreword by Michael Fertik (“Reputation Defender”). A book about the Scheff v. Bock (2006, Florida), and its effect on anonymity on the Internet and the risks of libel even for amateur speakers. Blogger. William Patry. Moral Panics and the Copyright Wars. London: Oxford University Press, 2009. ISBN 978-0-19-538564-9, hardbound, 266 pages. Is copyright “ a tax on readers for the purpose of giving bounty to writers”? That’s how is was seen in Britain in the past. Blogger. Richard Clarke: Cyber War: The Next Threat to National Security and What to Do About It. ECS/Harper, 2010. ISBN, ISBN 978-0-06-196223-3, 290 pages, hardcover. Blogger . |
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