Gordon -- That's a big amen. -- ken
"The only reason for opposing democracy
is to profit from the lack of freedom."
-- from the essay, Global Sense
http://www.media-visions.com/globalsense.html
>Dave Farber posted to his IP list on friday afternoon, a review of
>Larry Lessig's outstanding new book ''Code and Other Laws of
>Cyberspace.'' Within an hour after reading Simson Garfinkel's review
>I had word from larry lessig (who has moved to to Berlin) and
>confirmation from his publisher that a review copy was on its way.
>Yesterday, the copy arrived.
>
>The work is superb. With ICANN an unmentioned case study in Lessig's
>analysis.
>
>Here is my own review. (Given his own oft stated concerns about
>ICANN, if Dave Farber has read Lessig's work it would be very
>interesting to hear his opinion as well.)
>
>Larry Lessig in his new book Code: and Other Laws of Cyberspace finds that
>he who controls the code on which cyberspace is founded will control
>whether freedom can exist in cyberspace. Lessig pounds home this
>conclusion again and again. I find it fascinating that Lessig ignores
>ICANN. For we note the reason for ICANN's being in such a hurry. It
>knows what Lessig knows about ownership and control. It must craft
>its architectural code on behalf of e-commerce and government before
>the rest of us awaken.
>
>Lessig writes "cyberspace [is changing] as it moves from a world of
>relative freedom to a world of relatively perfect control' ..... The
>first intuition of our founders was right. Structure builds
>substance. Guarantee the structural (a space in cyberspace for open
>code and (much of) the substance will take care of itself." . . . "We
>are just beginning to see why the architecture of the space matters
>-- in particular why the ownership of that architecture matters."
>
>"I end by asking whether we, meaning Americans, are up to the
>challenges that these choices present. Given our present tradition
>in constitutional law and our present faith in representative
>government, are we able to respond collectively to the changes that I
>have described?"
>
>"My strong sense is that we are not. We are at a stage in history
>when we urgently need to make fundamental choices about values. But
>we trust no institution of government to make such choices. Courts
>cannot do it because, as a legal culture we don't want courts
>choosing among contested matters of values and congress should not do
>it because, as a political culture we so deeply question the products
>of ordinary government."
>
>"Change is possible. I don't doubt that revolutions lie in our
>future. The open source code movement is just such a revolution. But
>I fear. . . that too much is at stake to allow the revolutionaries to
>succeed."
>
>"The argument of this book is that the invisible hand of cyberspace
>is building an architecture that perfects control -- an architecture
>that makes possible highly efficient regulation. . . . a distributed
>architecture of regulatory control an axis between commerce and the
>state..... much of the liberty present in cyberspace's founding will
>vanish in its future."
>
>Lessigs conclusions decode what ICANN is doing. It is quite clear to
>me that, on behalf of commerce, ICANN will own that architecture.
>ICANN will control the code. It will allow neither diversity nor open
>source code. ICANN owns all domains and all DNS. It has one uniform
>dispute resolution policy. It hammers out its uniform rule in pursuit
>of the facilitation of electronic commerce. It embodies what Lessig
>fears.
>
>Lessig writes: "In many [cases] our Constitution yields no answer to
>the question of how it should be applied, because at least two
>answers are possible-that is, in light of the choices that the
>framers actually made."
>
>"For Americans, this ambiguity creates-a problem. If we lived in an era when
>courts felt entitled to select the answer that in the context made
>the most sense,
>there would be no problem. Latent ambiguities would be answered by choices
>made
>by judges-the framers could have gone either way, but we choose to go
>this way."
>
>"But we don't live in such an era, and so we don't have a way for
>courts to resolve these ambiguities. As a result, we must rely on
>other institutions. My claim, a dark one, is that we have no such
>institutions. If our ways don't change, our constitution in
>cyberspace will be a thinner and thinner regime."
>
>"Cyberspace will present us with ambiguities over and over again. It
>will press this
>question of how best to go on. We have tools from real space that
>will help resolve
>the interpretive questions by pointing us in one direction or
>another, at least some of the time. But in the end the tools will
>guide us even less than they do in real space and time. When the gap
>between their guidance and what we do becomes obvious, we will be
>forced to do something we are not very good at doing -- deciding what
>we want and what is right," Lessig concludes. Lessig has put his
>finger squarely on the reasons that ICANN has won its first round and
>may win successive rounds
>
>
>=========
>Hi Dave,
>
>I have followed for months your expressions of both concern about and
>support for ICANN. Does Lessig have it pegged right? If he does not
>what does he miss?
>
>also, IMHO, were paul revere among us today, he would be helping to
>carry lessigs message from one end of the net to the other.
>
>****************************************************************
>The COOK Report on Internet Index to seven years of the COOK Report
>431 Greenway Ave, Ewing, NJ 08618 USA http://cookreport.com
>(609) 882-2572 (phone & fax) ICANN: The Internet's Oversight Board -
>[EMAIL PROTECTED] NEW - Incompetence or Duplicity? ICANN
>and it Allies' Stealth Agenda http://cookreport.com/isoccontrol.shtml
>****************************************************************
