http://www.wired.com/news/news/politics/story/22101.html Lessig Suffers from Bad Code by Declan McCullagh ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) 3:00 a.m. 6.Oct.99.PDT Remember technorealism? If not, you're lucky to have missed one of the more forgettable fads of early 1998. At a Harvard Law School conference that spring, a host of left-leaning intellectuals passed out a turgid manifesto and demanded additional government involvement in the infrastructure of the Internet. The technorealists argued that the future is too important to be left to programmers, engineers, and executives. Instead, they claimed that technical standards "are too important to be entrusted to the marketplace alone." But they never explained why Washington bureaucrats would be any smarter or do a better job. Fortunately, the world forgot about this silliness and moved on. Sadly, Harvard Law School professor Lawrence Lessig didn't, and has expanded that "technorealism manifesto" into a 400-page book called Code, and Other Laws of Cyberspace. Lessig, a former special master in the US v. Microsoft antitrust trial, readily admits that "much in this book draws from the picture that [author David Shenk] and his technorealists have sketched." And it suffers from the same flaws. It's not that Code is poorly written, because Lessig is -- for a lawyer, at least -- an entertaining author who offers real-world examples like the Communications Decency Act, death-porn scribbler Jake Baker, and the ICANN domain name disputes to buttress his argument. And it's not that that Lessig is entirely mistaken, for he makes many well argued and cogent points. Yes, public key cryptography is one of the most important discoveries of this century. It is true that the design of technology can influence society, and that commercial firms can corrupt and even pervert supposed industry standards. By ginning up their own custom HTML extensions, Netscape and Microsoft have done exactly that. The real problem is that Lessig's proposed solution is no better. He bemoans that too much of the Internet is run by companies and individuals instead of by bureaucrats and legislators -- and the private sector isn't limited by constitutional restrictions on the government. [...] -------------------------------------------------------------------------- POLITECH -- the moderated mailing list of politics and technology To subscribe: send a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with this text: subscribe politech More information is at http://www.well.com/~declan/politech/ --------------------------------------------------------------------------
