Code and Other Laws of Cyberspace by Lawrence Lessig, Basic Books,
拢19.50/$30, ISBN 046503912X
NO ONE controls the Internet鈥攖hat鈥檚 been the claim from the start. The
argument is simple: the Net is too diverse and its users too numerous for any
government or commercial body to dominate. Anonymous servers can re-route
censored e-mail. Laws count for nothing: websites illegal in one country can
find a host or mirror site in many others. Secrets will be disseminated far and
wide.
Certainly, for a while this seemed true, but can this freedom continue?
Harvard professor Lawrence Lessig argues in Code and Other Laws of
Cyberspace that slowly, almost invisibly, the Net is being changed. Lessig
is best known for being appointed to serve as the court鈥檚 鈥渟pecial master鈥� to
advise on technology issues in the Microsoft antitrust trial. He believes that
commerce is rebuilding the Net鈥檚 architecture as a tool for regulation, and
hence control.
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The word 鈥渃ode鈥� is important, because of its double meaning: first, as the
code of law and, secondly, as the code in which software is written. Both kinds
of code constrain behaviour, but while the legal code is open to inspection and
modification, many types of software code are not.
It鈥檚 at this point that the Microsoft trial (not discussed in this book) is
relevant.
Lessig argues that code which can be owned鈥擬icrosoft鈥檚 many software
products certainly qualify鈥攃an be controlled, either by the owner or by
someone who can put pressure on the owner.
His prime example is the telephone network. Recent legislation in the US
requires the telephone network to be tappable; but this legal decision can only
be implemented as long as the technical equipment remains, as it is now, under
the control of a few organisations. By contrast, the four most important pieces
of software that make the Net, including the Web, work, are open-code software.
Hundreds of people have worked to create and improve both them and the system鈥檚
underlying protocols. Millions more have inspected them.
But there are tiny nuances of software design that have never come under any
kind of public scrutiny. As more and more of our public life comes to be
mediated by the Net, Lessig argues that these technological decisions have
consequences for democratic values. For example, says Lessig, look at the chat
rooms on AOL: only 23 people can take part at once. So it is impossible, Lessig
points out, to mount an effective real-time protest on AOL鈥檚 service. Users
cannot band together as they did, for example, on the graphical service Worlds
Away to protest about lack of service.
Lessig makes a persuasive case that electronic commerce is altering the Net鈥檚
early libertarian character to suit its demands. Libertarians argue that free
markets can solve everything; they will really hate his view that some
government regulation is necessary. His examples are powerful. The Y2K bug
showed us libertarianism run wild, he argues. It was a sort of ecological
problem that need not have happened if software programmers were held legally
liable for the consequences of the code they produce. And that would take
government regulation.
But Lessig鈥檚 book isn鈥檛 a defence of government either. He opposes bad
regulation, such as the Communications Decency Act in the US and other efforts
to censor the Net. What he wants is for us to recognise that technology isn鈥檛
neutral. The massive success of the Net has been in part because of decisions
made by its inventors to favour freedom in its use. Shouldn鈥檛 we, he asks, think
carefully before we let it change too much?