It follows that what we will be able to do in the future will be determined by code that will be written tomorrow, and we should be thinking about who will determine what this code will be. 1 The Internet poses new problems for legal and economic theory: Due to the global character of the Internet, its open architecture, and the anonymity of its users, states are impeded in enforcing their laws in their territory. Even more important, this invisible code has been written by people we did not elect and who have no formal obligations to us, such as the members of the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) or the more recently-developed Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN). Lessig, Lawrence: Code and other Laws of Cyberspace. So while the libertarians among us rail against the idea of government, our freedoms in cyberspace are being determined by an invisible structure that is every bit as restricting as any laws that can come out of a legislature, legitimate or not. What we can and can't do there is governed by the underlying code of all of the programs that make up the Internet, which both permit and restrict. Abstract: Code and Other Laws of Cyberspace is Lawrence Lessigs ambitious attempt to make sense of the new kinds of legal and regulatory problems that. Abstract: In Code, the most influential book yet written about law and cyberspace, Lawrence Lessig makes an intriguing proposal for shaping privacy on the. While we tend to assume that what is in cyberspace is a given, in fact everything there is a construction based on decisions made by people. It is a fairly simple concept: since cyberspace is entirely human-made, there are no natural laws to determine its architecture. Social aspects of Information superhighway,Īlthough the book is named Code and Other Laws of Cyberspace, Lessig uses this theme sparingly.

Code by Lawrence Lessig