Posted by David Post:
Lessig's "Code" at 10:
http://volokh.com/archives/archive_2009_05_17-2009_05_23.shtml#1242574821
There�s an interesting [1]discussion going on over at Cato.org about
Larry Lessig�s book Code (and Other Laws of Cyberspace), celebrating
the 10th anniversary of its publication. Code�s a very important book,
in my view (and, I think, objectively speaking, in the view of pretty
much everyone involved in thinking about law and regulation on the
Net). Lessig got a lot of things right in Code ; most fundamentally,
the idea around which much of the book is organized - that �code is
law� on the global network � is a very rich one, and even a profound
one, and it has been central to a great deal of very productive
thinking in the field. Code got some things wrong, too � most
fundamentally, when Lessig argued that it is fruitless (and perhaps
even dangerous) to talk about cyberspace's �nature.� [If I could
explain my reasons for saying that he was wrong about that without
having to write a whole book, I would do so; but I can�t, so you�ll
just have [2]read the book if you�re interested].
I�ve written a fair bit about Code, in my book and [3]elsewhere, and I
won�t repeat what I�ve already said � in fact, one of the interesting
things about Code and its role within the cyberlaw debates of the last
decade is that the book actually helped move the conversation forward.
Lessig positioned the book as an attack on, and a direct response to,
the �cyber-libertarians.� The �cyber-libertarians,� in turn � myself
among them � took him to task for that. But after duking it out for a
while, it turns out that there wasn�t as much there as we thought:
that debate isn�t where the interesting action is, in cyberspace.
There�s plenty to argue about, regarding cyberspace law and policy;
but arguing about the labels isn�t too useful or productive. That�s
precisely the interesting thing about cyberspace; as [4]Lessig puts
it, �what drew me to cyberlaw originally was that it (originally)
obscured politics. It confused intuitions. And in that confusion,
people were forced to think. No crude shorthands. No summary judgment
based upon a supposed set of affinities with debates almost a century
old.�
So when [5]Adam Thierer, defending the cyber-libertarian position,
writes:
�Thus, at risk of repeating myself, I must underscore the key
principles that separate the cyber-libertarian and
cyber-collectivist schools of thinking. It comes down to this: The
cyber-libertarian believes that �code failures� are ultimately
better addressed by voluntary, spontaneous, bottom-up, marketplace
responses than by coerced, top-down, governmental solutions.
Moreover, the decisive advantage of the market-driven approach to
correcting code failure comes down to the rapidity and nimbleness
of those response(s).�
[6]Lessig can respond: I completely agree.
OK, then; we�re all Jeffersonians, now. (�We are all republicans. We
are all federalists.�] We all agree: voluntary, spontaneous,
bottom-up, marketplace responses are better than coerced, top-down,
governmental solutions � except when they�re not. That is
simultaneously both a useless tautology and an important point of
consensus. What do we do about copyright law? Should we preserve the
ability to speak anonymously on the Net? Should end-to-end network
neutrality be preserved? How? We can just assume that we are all
looking for the �voluntary, spontaneous, bottom-up� solution � but
what is it? What does the voluntary, spontaneous, bottom-up solution
to the copyright problem, or the anonymity problem, look like? What is
the �problem� we�re trying to solve? Where do we want the system to
end up?
Those are the interesting debates, in cyberlaw. There�s plenty to
disagree about, and there are lots of heated and important arguments,
about what kind of copyright law we should have, or how much anonymity
needs protection, or whether end-to-end is valuable in and of itself.
The line dividing the opposing viewpoints, though, isn�t captured by
the labels; the positions that are staked out don�t fall out along
libertarian vs. collectivist lines. Plenty of libertarians, and plenty
of collectivists, can agree (if perhaps for different reasons) that
copyright law needs a radical overhaul (and there are libertarian and
collectivists a-plenty among those who argue that it does not).
That�s good news, I think, because it means that (rough) consensus on
particular issues, and specific problems, might actually be achievable
� maybe even on the required global scale. Libertarian vs
collectivist, Jeffersonian vs Hamiltonian � issues that align
themselves clearly along these lines never can get resolved by
consensus, because people disagree, quite fundamentally, about these
principles. Real change is made possible when those lines don�t define
the debate anymore.
References
1.
http://www.cato-unbound.org/issues/ten-years-of-code-a-reassessment-of-lawrence-lessigs-code-and-other-laws-of-cyberspace/
2. http://tinyurl.com/jeffersonsmoose
3. http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=251014
4.
http://www.cato-unbound.org/2009/05/14/lawrence-lessig/code-and-common-causes/
5.
http://www.cato-unbound.org/2009/05/14/adam-thierer/our-conflict-of-cyber-visions/
6.
http://www.cato-unbound.org/2009/05/14/lawrence-lessig/code-and-common-causes/
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