To: John F. Dowd who wrote (14925 ) 12/16/1997 12:13:00 AM From: Gerald R. Lampton Read Replies (1) | Respond to of 24154
>Who in justice would you have write the code?In cyberspace, because code is so plastic and so powerful, and because law is so feeble and (on an international scale) so rigid, code has a comparative regulatory advantage over law. A gap in legal regulation will therefore emerge, and code will fill that gap. Structures of regulation get codified in the architecture of the net, and these structures of regulation entail important values choices. Whether information will be kept private, whether encrypted speech is allowed, whether anonymity is permissible, whether access is open and free - these are all policy choices made by default by a structure of code that has developed - unaware at times, and, generally, uncritically of the politics that code entails. Some argue that this shows that government should simply get out of the way. That government should let code regulate, and defer to its regulations in this space. But this is quite unlikely. We shouldn't expect government simply to cede jurisdiction over cyberspace to Barlowtypes. Instead, government will shift to a different regulatory technique. Rather than regulating behavior directly, government will regulate indirectly. Rather than making rules that apply to constrain individuals directly, government will make rules that require a change in code, so that code regulates differently. Code will become the government's tool. Law will regulate code, so that code constrains as government wants. Lessig, THE CONSTITUTION OF CODE: LIMITATIONS ON CHOICE--BASED CRITIQUES OF CYBERSPACE REGULATION, 5 CommLaw Conspectus 181, 184 (1997).