Code and Other Laws of Cyberspace
by Lawrence Lessig
A review
by Holly Gunn

 
Part 2: Code and Other Regulators BACKHOMENext

In Part One, Lessig demonstrated that cyberspace can be altered because the code that governs it can be altered, and demonstrated that because of the strong forces of commerce and government, that cyberspace will not take care of itself. In Part two, Lessig describes the various worlds and cultures that comprise cyberspace, the good, the bad, and the ugly, so that the users of the Net, can think about the type of worlds, and the values inherit in those worlds,  they would like the Net to embody.  These many spaces , or communities, in cyberspace, each have different values. These values are shown by the actions and practices that occur in these different spaces.  "Cyberspace is not a place. It is many places."  (Lessig. Code and other laws...1999 p. 63)  The values of one MUD space differ from another MUD space,  and these values differ from those of different  AOL communities, or those of a listserv. Norms of chats vary from moderated to unmoderated chats, and from chat to chat.  Some of the values might be pseudonymity, visibility, non-transcience, freedom of speech, privacy and so on. These nature of these places of cyberspace are created and enforced by code.  Lessig repeats, "Cyberspace is not a place; it is many places.  Its places don't have one nature; the places of cyberspace have many different natures.  These natures are not given, they are made.  They are set (in part, at least) by the architectures that constitute these different spaces... These architectures of code are set by the architects of cyberspace - code writers." (Lessig. Code and other laws... 1999. p. 82.) 

Various forces regulate an individual in real space: law, architecture, norms, and the market.  Architecture, norms, and the market are subject to regulation by the law of the land, the East Coast Code.  These same forces also regulate behavior in cyberspace.  Government has a range of strategies it uses to regulate.  "By regulating code writing, the government can achieve regulatory ends, often without suffering the political consequences that the same ends, pursued differently, would yield." (Lessig. Code and other other laws... 1999. p. 99.)  Lessig believes we should worry about this,  and we should worry about a regime that makes invisible regulation, such as regulation of code, easier. Toward the end of the second section of the book, Lessig shows how open source code is one system that means less control, or at least control that is visible.   Open code software is less susceptible to regulation. There may be control, but the user is aware of it.  Regulable code is closed code, and most of this code is controlled by commercial interests.
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