Code and Other Laws of Cyberspace

Last updated
Code and Other Laws of Cyberspace
Code and Other Laws of Cyberspace (book) cover art.jpg
Author Lawrence Lessig
PublisherBasic Books
Publication date
1999
Pages297
ISBN 0-465-03912-X
OCLC 43836713
Followed by The Future of Ideas  

Code and Other Laws of Cyberspace is a 1999 book by Lawrence Lessig on the structure and nature of regulation of the Internet.

Contents

Summary

The pathetic dot theory Pathetic dot theory.png
The pathetic dot theory

The primary idea of the book, as expressed in the title, is the notion that computer code (or "West Coast Code", referring to Silicon Valley) regulates conduct in much the same way that legal code (or "East Coast Code", referring to Washington, D.C.) does. [1] More generally, Lessig argues that there are actually four major regulators (Law, Norms, Market, Architecture) each of which has a profound impact on society and whose implications must be considered (sometimes called the "pathetic dot theory", after the "dot" that is constrained by these regulators.)

The book includes a discussion of the implications for copyright law, arguing that cyberspace changes not only the technology of copying but also the power of law to protect against illegal copying. It goes so far as to argue that code displaces the balance in copyright law and doctrines such as fair use. [2] If it becomes possible to license every aspect of use (by means of trusted systems created by code), no aspect of use would have the protection of fair use. The importance of this side of the story is generally underestimated and, as the examples in the book show, very often, code is even (only) considered as an extra tool to fight against "unlimited copying."

Other books

The Future of Ideas is a continuation of Code's analysis of copyright, where Lessig argues that too much long term copyright protection hampers the creation of new ideas based on existing works, and advocates the importance of existing works entering the public domain quickly. [3]

Revision

In March 2005, Lessig launched the Code V.2 Wiki to update the book with current information, which he then adapted into a second edition of the book, Code: Version 2.0 , in 2006. [4]

Influence

The book has been widely cited, helping Lessig repeatedly achieve top places on lists of most-cited law school faculty. [5] [6] It has been called "the most influential book to date about law and cyberspace", [7] "seminal", [8] and in a critical essay on the book's 10th anniversary, author Declan McCullagh (subject of the chapter "What Declan Doesn't Get") said it was "difficult to overstate the influence" of the book. [9]

See also

Related Research Articles

Lawrence Lessig American academic, political activist

Lester Lawrence Lessig III is an American academic, attorney, and political activist. He is the Roy L. Furman Professor of Law at Harvard Law School and the former director of the Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics at Harvard University. Lessig was a candidate for the Democratic Party's nomination for president of the United States in the 2016 U.S. presidential election but withdrew before the primaries.

Criticism of copyright Dissenting views of copyright law

Criticism of copyright, perhaps outright anti-copyright sentiment, is a dissenting view of the current state of copyright law or copyright as a concept. Critical groups often discuss philosophical, economical, or social rationales of such laws and the laws' implementations, the benefits of which they claim do not justify the policy's costs to society. They advocate for changing the current system, though different groups have different ideas of what that change should be. Some call for remission of the policies to a previous state—copyright once covered few categories of things and had shorter term limits—or they may seek to expand concepts like fair use that allow permissionless copying. Others seek the abolition of copyright itself.

<i>The Future of Ideas</i>

The Future of Ideas: The Fate of the Commons in a Connected World (2001) is a book by Lawrence Lessig, at the time of writing a professor of law at Stanford Law School, who is well known as a critic of the extension of the copyright term in US. It is a continuation of his previous book Code and Other Laws of Cyberspace, which is about how computer programs can restrict freedom of ideas in cyberspace.

Jonathan Zittrain American law professor (born 1969)

Jonathan L. Zittrain is an American professor of Internet law and the George Bemis Professor of International Law at Harvard Law School. He is also a professor at the Harvard Kennedy School, a professor of computer science at the Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, and co-founder and director of Harvard's Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society. Previously, Zittrain was Professor of Internet Governance and Regulation at the Oxford Internet Institute of the University of Oxford and visiting professor at the New York University School of Law and Stanford Law School. He is the author of The Future of the Internet and How to Stop It as well as co-editor of the books, Access Denied, Access Controlled, and Access Contested.

Internet culture Culture that has emerged from the use of computer networks

Internet culture, or cyberculture, is a culture that describes the many manifestations of the use of computer networks for communication, entertainment, business, and recreation. Some features of Internet culture include online communities, gaming, social media, and more, as well as topics related to identity and privacy. Due to the internet’s large scale use and adoption, the impacts of internet culture on society and non-digital cultures have been widespread. Additionally, due to the all encompassing nature of the internet and internet culture, different facets of internet culture are often studied individually rather than holistically, such as social media, gaming, specific communities, and more.

<i>Free Culture</i> (book) Book by Lawrence Lessig

Free Culture: How Big Media Uses Technology and the Law to Lock Down Culture and Control Creativity is a 2004 book by law professor Lawrence Lessig that was released on the Internet under the Creative Commons Attribution/Non-commercial license on March 25, 2004.

Remix culture Society that allows and encourages derivative works

Remix culture, sometimes read-write culture, is a term describing a society that allows and encourages derivative works by combining or editing existing materials to produce a new creative work or product. A remix culture would be, by default, permissive of efforts to improve upon, change, integrate, or otherwise remix the work of copyright holders. While combining elements has always been a common practice of artists of all domains throughout human history, the growth of exclusive copyright restrictions in the last several decades limits this practice more and more by the legal chilling effect. In reaction, Harvard law professor Lawrence Lessig, who considers remixing a desirable concept for human creativity, has worked since the early 2000s on a transfer of the remixing concept into the digital age. Lessig founded the Creative Commons in 2001, which released Licenses as tools to enable remix culture again, as remixing is legally prevented by the default exclusive copyright regime applied currently on intellectual property. The remix culture for cultural works is related to and inspired by the earlier Free and open-source software for software movement, which encourages the reuse and remixing of software works.

Free-culture movement Social movement promoting the freedom to distribute and modify the creative works of others

The free-culture movement is a social movement that promotes the freedom to distribute and modify the creative works of others in the form of free content or open content without compensation to, or the consent of, the work's original creators, by using the Internet and other forms of media.

John Palfrey US law professor

John Gorham Palfrey VII is an American educator, scholar, and law professor. He is an authority on the legal aspects of emerging media and an advocate for Internet freedom, including increased online transparency and accountability as well as child safety. In March 2019, he was named the president of the MacArthur Foundation effective September 1, 2019. Palfrey was the 15th Head of School at Phillips Academy in Andover, Massachusetts from 2012 to 2019. He has been an important figure at Harvard Law School and served as executive director of Harvard's Berkman Center for Internet & Society from 2002 to 2008.

The Computers, Freedom and Privacy Conference is an annual academic conference held in the United States or Canada about the intersection of computer technology, freedom, and privacy issues. The conference was founded in 1991, and since at least 1999, it has been organized under the aegis of the Association for Computing Machinery. It was originally sponsored by CPSR.

Cyberethics

Cyber ethics is the philosophic study of ethics pertaining to computers, encompassing user behavior and what computers are programmed to do, and how this affects individuals and society. For years, various governments have enacted regulations while organizations have defined policies about cyberethics.

Public Knowledge is a non-profit Washington, D.C.-based public interest group that is involved in intellectual property law, competition, and choice in the digital marketplace, and an open standards/end-to-end internet.

Information technology law concerns the law of information technology, including computing and the internet. It is related to legal informatics, and governs the digital dissemination of both (digitized) information and software, information security and electronic commerce aspects and it has been described as "paper laws" for a "paperless environment". It raises specific issues of intellectual property in computing and online, contract law, privacy, freedom of expression, and jurisdiction.

<i>Remix</i> (book) 2008 book by Lawrence Lessig

Remix: Making Art and Commerce Thrive in the Hybrid Economy is Lawrence Lessig's fifth book. The book was made available for free download and remixing under the CC BY-NC Creative Commons license via Bloomsbury Academic. It is still available via the Internet Archive. It details a hypothesis about the societal effect of the Internet, and how this will affect production and consumption of popular culture to a "remix culture".

<i>Cyber Rights</i> Non-fiction book about cyberlaw, written by Mike Godwin

Cyber Rights: Defending Free Speech in the Digital Age is a non-fiction book about cyberlaw, written by free speech lawyer Mike Godwin. It was first published in 1998 by Times Books. It was republished in 2003 as a revised edition by The MIT Press. Godwin graduated from the University of Texas School of Law in 1990 and was the first staff counsel for the Electronic Frontier Foundation. Written with a first-person perspective, Cyber Rights offers a background in the legal issues and history pertaining to free speech on the Internet. It documents the author's experiences in defending free speech online, and puts forth the thesis that "the remedy for the abuse of free speech is more speech". Godwin emphasizes that decisions made about the expression of ideas on the Internet affect freedom of speech in other media as well, as granted by the First Amendment to the United States Constitution.

Eric Goldman

Eric Goldman is a law professor at Santa Clara University School of Law. He also co-directs the law school's High Tech Law Institute and co-supervises the law school's Privacy Law Certificate.

Pathetic dot theory

The pathetic dot theory or the New Chicago School theory was introduced by Lawrence Lessig in a 1998 article and popularized in his 1999 book, Code and Other Laws of Cyberspace. It is a socioeconomic theory of regulation. It discusses how lives of individuals are regulated by four forces: the law, social norms, the market, and architecture.

Chris Hoofnagle

Chris Jay Hoofnagle is an American professor at the University of California, Berkeley who teaches information privacy law, computer crime law, regulation of online privacy, internet law, and seminars on new technology. Hoofnagle has contributed to the privacy literature by writing privacy law legal reviews and conducting research on the privacy preferences of Americans. Notably, his research demonstrates that most Americans prefer not to be targeted online for advertising and despite claims to the contrary, young people care about privacy and take actions to protect it. Hoofnagle has written scholarly articles regarding identity theft, consumer privacy, U.S. and European privacy laws, and privacy policy suggestions.

Network sovereignty Effort to create boundaries on a network

In internet governance, network sovereignty is the effort of a governing entity, such as a state, to create boundaries on a network and then exert a form of control, often in the form of law enforcement over such boundaries.

Danielle Citron

Danielle Keats Citron is a Jefferson Scholars Foundation Schenck Distinguished Professor in Law at the University of Virginia School of Law, where she teaches information privacy, free expression, and civil rights law. Citron is the author of Hate Crimes in Cyberspace (2014). She also serves as the Vice President of the Cyber Civil Rights Initiative], an organization which provides assistance and legislative support to victims of online abuse. Prior to joining UVA Law, Citron was an Austin B. Fletcher Distinguished Professor of Law at Boston University Law School, and was also the Morton & Sophia Macht Professor of Law at the University of Maryland School of Law.

References

  1. "Digital Commerce; Settlement talks in the Microsoft case hinge on a question: Are the laws of government or software supreme?". The New York Times. December 6, 1999. Retrieved December 15, 2011.
  2. Mann, Charles C. (December 15, 1999). "The Unacknowledged Legislators of the Digital World". Digital Culture. The Atlantic. Retrieved December 15, 2011.
  3. Jesdanun, Anick (January 6, 2002). "Net legal scholar warns of threats". The Telegraph-Herald. Retrieved December 15, 2011.
  4. "Code v2 Launches Today - Creative Commons". Creative Commons. 2006-12-11. Retrieved 2015-07-16.
  5. "Ten most cited law faculty in the U.S. 2009 through 2013". Brian Leiter's Law School Reports. 2014-06-11. Retrieved 2015-07-16.
  6. Phillips, James Cleith; Yoo, John (2012-09-03). "The Cite Stuff: Inventing a Better Law Faculty Relevance Measure". Rochester, NY. SSRN   2140944 .Cite journal requires |journal= (help)
  7. Schwartz, Paul M. (2001-01-15). "Beyond Lessig's Code for Internet Privacy: Cyberspace Filters, Privacy Control and Fair Information Practices". Rochester, NY. SSRN   254849 .Cite journal requires |journal= (help)
  8. Timothy, Schoechle (2009-04-30). Standardization and Digital Enclosure: The Privatization of Standards, Knowledge, and Policy in the Age of Global Information Technology: The Privatization of Standards, Knowledge, and Policy in the Age of Global Information Technology. IGI Global. ISBN   9781605663357.
  9. McCullagh, Declan (2009-05-04). "What Larry Didn't Get". Cato Unbound. Retrieved 2015-07-16.