Malvin's Reviews > Code: Version 2.0

Code by Lawrence Lessig

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Nophoto-u-50x66
's review
Jul 24, 11


Describes how the internet or cyberspace is being regulated and the role of code, encompassing embedded software and hardware code as well as current laws. With regulability being determined by architecture, norms, law and market forces, cyberspace may well end up being the most regulated and intrusive "space". In introducing cyberspace, it distinguishes cyberspace from the internet based on the lifespan plus the level of control and interaction e.g. internet banking vs a virtual world like Second Life. Dedicating a few chapters on latent ambiguities using real space vs cyberspace examples, it challenges the interpretation of various amendments to the US Constitution or Bill of Rights in today's context on intellectual property, privacy and free speech. It also touches on sovereignty or rather how competing ones deal with each other. It proposes the need for courts to embrace the challenge associated with latent ambiguities and to initiate and be part of the conversation, the move to increase transparency at the code level via open code as opposed to closed code and the rejection of decisions or initiatives crafted by election-funding lobbyists. Written by a then Stanford law professor currently at Harvard, who is also the founder of Creative Commons, it can lengthy and unengaging at times but it will suit persevering newbies and should also offer some light to informed netizens.

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