From Barnes & Noble
Harvard Law professor Lawrence Lessig argues that cyberspace is not inherently a libertarian's dream come true. The architecture underlying cyberspace determines its character. If and when that architecture is changed, cyberspace can become highly regulated. Already issues of privacy and tracking are of major concern. Lessig explains how cyberspace is evolving. A must-read for those interested in the laws surrounding cyberspace, as well as concerned private citizens.
From the Publisher
Should cyberspace be regulated? How can it be done? It's a cherished belief of techies and net denizens everywhere that cyberspace is fundamentally impossible to regulate. Harvard Professor Lawrence Lessig warns that, if we're not careful we'll wake up one day to discover that the character of cyberspace has changed from under us. Cyberspace will no longer be a world of relative freedom; instead it will be a world of perfect control where our identities, actions, and desires are monitored, tracked, and analyzed for the latest market research report. Commercial forces will dictate the change, and architecture—the very structure of cyberspace itself—will dictate the form our interactions can and cannot take.
Code And Other Laws of Cyberspace is an exciting examination of how the core values of cyberspace as we know it—intellectual property, free speech, and privacy-—are being threatened and what we can do to protect them. Lessig shows how code—the architecture and law of cyberspace—can make a domain, site, or network free or restrictive; how technological architectures influence people's behavior and the values they adopt; and how changes in code can have damaging consequences for individual freedoms. Code is not just for lawyers and policymakers; it is a must-read for everyone concerned with survival of democratic values in the Information Age.
Harvard Business Review -
Carl Shapiro
Code and Other Laws of CyberspaceLawrence Lessig makes the case that important gains in liberty promoted by the Internet, such as freedom of speech, are now at risk. Code is both mind expanding and entertaining.
Baltimore Sun -
Michael Himowitz
[T]his brilliant, scholarly but eminently readable
examination of the laws, rules and customs that govern the Internet
should be required reading for anyone who spends more than a few
minutes a week online.
Philip Y. Blue
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Library Journal
Code, Lessig's seminal examination of the interrelationships among the Internet, privacy, and intellectual property, was published in 2000. It invigorated scholars of constitutional law with a fresh perspective on the nature, level, and extent of technology's reach into the realm of jurisprudence. Now this work has been collaboratively revised: Lessig (founder, Ctr. for the Internet & Society, Stanford Univ. Law Sch.; The Future of Ideas) and his readers call the shots alongside one another, with readers editing the original text via the author's wiki. The thesis of 2.0remains essentially the same: the Internet's infrastructure will become increasingly controlled and regulable through digital identity technologies, enabling a partnership between government and commerce that will shape the characteristics and determine the boundaries of cyberspace in a manner favorable to these two powerful forces of social order. Drawing upon and expanding the works of first-generation cyberspace theorists, Lessig foresees an extension of control and regulation that cybernauts of the 1990s would have found Orwellian. He also delineates the legal and ethical values inherent within three major categories increasingly under assault by the nontraditional vagaries of cyberspace: privacy protection, free speech, and intellectual property rights. His solution here is the creation of a creative or intellectual Commons, a resource that anyone within a relevant community can use without seeking the permission of anyone else. Highly recommended for academic libraries and legal collections.
Basic Books
"Lessig's exposition reads like a Stanley Kubrick film, with the menace made palpable by new technologies…It is a troubling book, and one that needs to be taken seriously."
-- Daniel Bell, author of The Coming of Post-Industrial Society
"This may be the most important book ever published about the Internet, as well as one of the most readable. Lessig's ideas are deep and insightful, and they will shape the way the future develops. He is a master at seeing the important ideas lurking behind things we all take for granted."
--Mark A. Lemley, Boalt Hall School of Law, University of California, Berkley
"Lessig's book is an astonishing achievement. The nation's leading scholar of cyberspace has produced a paradigm-shifting work that will transform the debate about the architecture of cyberspace. Lessig challenges us to make choices about freedom, privacy, intellectual property, and technology that most of us didn't recognize as choices in the first place."
--Jeffrey Rosen, Legal Affairs Editor, The New Republic
The New York Times Book Review -
David Pogue
In Code, the Harvard Law School professor Lawrence Lessig, freshly
famous from his role as friend of the court in the Microsoft antitrust suit,
makes an alarming and impassioned claim: that the Internet will indeed
soon be regulated. ''Left to itself,'' he says, ''cyberspace will become a
perfect tool of control'' -- not by the government, which he characterizes
as clueless and inadequate, but by software programmers. In a book
that's sometimes as brilliant as the best teacher you ever had, sometimes
as pretentious as a deconstructionists' conference, Lessig plays digital
Cassandra: he predicts that the Internet will become a monster that
tracks our every move, but that nobody will heed his warning.
What People Are Saying
Stewart Brand
From the Author of The Media Lab and The Clock of the Long Now
Lawrence Lessig is a James Madison of our time, crafting the lineaments of a
well-tempered cyberspace. This book is a primer of "running code" for digital civilization. Like Madison, Lessig is a model of balance, judgement, ingenuity, and persuasive argument.
Andrew L. Shapiro
From the Author of The Control Revolution
Graceful, provocative, witty, and unpredictable, Code is a masterpiece that
neither lawyers nor Internet mavens can keep for themselves. It is
indispensable for anyone who wants to understand the digital age.
Bruce Ackerman
Code penetrates the cyberfluff to reveal the deep structure of our brave new
world.
Mark A. Lemley
This may be the most important book ever published about the Internet, as well as one of the most readable. Lessig's ideas are deep and insightful, and they will shape the way the future develops. He is a master at seeing the important ideas lurking behind things we all take for granted.
Charles Fried
This fascinating and provocative book is a fine introduction to the brave new world of the Internet, to the novel issues it raises, and to the old issues it poses in a new light.
Daniel Bell
From the Author of The Coming of Post-Industrial Society
Lessig's exposition reads like a Stanley Kubrick film, with the menace made
palpable by new technologies....It is a troubling book, and one that needs
to be taken seriously.
Jeffrey Rosen
Lessig's book is an astonishing achievement. The nation's leading scholar of
cyberspace has produced a paradigm-shifting work that will transform the debate about the architecture of cyberspace. Lessig challenges us to make choices about freedom, privacy, intellectual property, and technology that most of us didn't recognize as choices in the first place. This dark, exhilarating work is the most important book of its generation about the relationship between law, cyberspace, and social organization.
Julian Dibbell
From the Author of My Tiny Life: Crime and Passion in a Virtual World
Larry Lessig has taken an acute insight into the nature of law in and around
cyberspace and turned it into a sweeping, powerful, and brilliantly lucid
argument. For anyone passionate about securing the freedoms of thought and
expression the Internet seems to promise, Code is a book full of challenging and galvanizing heresiesónot the least of them being Lessig's central insistence that computer code can be just as much a threat to those freedoms as legislative code. This is not just an interesting point; it demands a rethinking of the social contract as radical as any since the days of Locke. And with wit, rigor, and a graceful accessibility, Lessig here proves himself Locke's worthy heir.
Jack M. Balkin
Jack M. Balkin, Knight Professor of Constitutional Law and the First Amendment, Director, the Information Society Project at Yale Law School
In Code and Other Laws of Cyberspace, Larry Lessig compellingly
demonstrates the central idea of cyberlaw: Software architecture can
regulate our lives as much as any legal rule. This is, quite simply, the
best book that has been written on the law of cyberspace.
Julie E. Cohen
Lawrence Lessig exposes the limits of prevailing views about how cyberspace
is (and is not) regulated, and makes a compelling case for the urgency of
learning to transcend those limits. Code is essential reading for those who care about the future of cyberspace, and of the human society within which "cyberspace" plays an increasingly central role.
William. J. Mitchell
Lawrence Lessig takes seriously the proposition that, in cyberspace, code is
the law, and he traces out the consequences in a lucid and insightful way. If you want to know what daily life will be like in the computer-mediated twenty-first century, this is essential reading.
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