At 2:51 AM -0500 3/13/00, Matthew Gaylor wrote:
>DOES CYBERSPACE NEED A CZAR?
>
>Lawrence Lessig, of Harvard Law School and Microsoft trial fame, has
>written an important book on the future of Internet policy, entitled
>CODE AND OTHER LAWS OF CYBERSPACE. Much talked about among the
>digerati, legal professionals and the general public, CODE is likely
>to have a lasting influence on the debate over regulating cyberspace
>-- and Lessig himself is likely to remain close to the epicenter of
>proposals for regulation.
Which is, of course, the point. The unelected, unaccountable,
academic elite -- so used to being the powers behind the throne, to
being the advisers and policy makers and the self-appointed
incarnations of the nebulous 'public demand' -- are finding
themselves out of the loop, looking at a world in which policies are
made by those who live in the society, not those who sit outside it
and impose rules based on whatever ideology is in fashion today. The
overarching goal of the Lessigs, the Shapiros, the Naders is to
somehow justify their continued existence. They see a world in which
they have no more power than anyone else, and, naturally, it
terrifies them. They can neither accept nor comprehend a world in
which they aren't the ones in charge.
If Lessig wishes to truly influence cyberspace, he should write code,
not books. The folks assembling a secure, anonymous, distributed
counterpart to the web (something *I* proposed nearly two years ago,
to a resounding yawn from f-c and a sneer from the illustrious PHB)
are doing a lot more to counter the evils Lessig claims to want to
fight than all the government committees in the world ever could. But
since they're doing it without his (or anyone elses) permission, he
doesn't like it. (If he's even aware of it, which I doubt, since
Lizard suspects he gets all his computer news from Znet..)
