To: Daniel Schuh who wrote (14906 ) 12/15/1997 5:09:00 AM From: Daniel Schuh Read Replies (3) | Respond to
Theorist on Cyberspace Law Studies Microsoft Browser Case nytimes.com Into the epic legal battle between the world's most powerful software corporation and the U.S. government, enter the quixotic Lawrence Lessig, a 36-year-old Harvard law professor who speaks softly and espouses radical new - and stubbornly non-partisan - ideas about how traditional legal principles translate into cyberspace. Lessig, whose father's steel fabricating company built bridges up and down the East Coast while he was growing up, has spent the last several years formulating legal bridges between physical space and cyberspace. Driving much of his scholarship is the concern that, almost unnoticed, computer code has taken on the governing properties of law - and moreover, that it is a more potent regulator of behavior than law could ever hope to be. "There is a question of when something becomes unlawful 'tying,' and how that analysis is different when you are dealing with technology as the bundler," said David Post, a law professor at Temple University and co-director of the Cyberspace Law Institute. "I think it's fair to conclude from his writing that Larry is suspicious about the market power over the basic architectural features of this landscape, which means the operating system." think about spilling the beans to the feds"... It all seems a little antithetical to classical "free and open markets", but what do I know. All part of that integrity and uniformity thing, I guess.Cass Sunstein, a law professor at Chicago who along with Lessig helped pioneer a new doctrine they call the "New Chicago School," warns against jumping to any conclusions about his former colleague's political alignment.
