''Code and Other Laws of Cyberspace'' is a 1999 book by

Lawrence Lessig Lester Lawrence "Larry" Lessig III (born June 3, 1961) is an American legal scholar and political activist. He is the Roy L. Furman Professor of Law at Harvard Law School and the former director of the Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics at Harvar ...

on the structure and nature of regulation of the Internet.

Summary

The primary idea of the book, as expressed in the title, is the notion that

computer code Computer code may refer to: *Source code *Machine code *Bytecode Bytecode (also called portable code or p-code) is a form of instruction set designed for efficient execution by a software interpreter. Unlike human-readable source code, byte ...

(or "West Coast Code", referring to

Silicon Valley Silicon Valley is a region in Northern California that is a global center for high technology and innovation. Located in the southern part of the San Francisco Bay Area, it corresponds roughly to the geographical area of the Santa Clara Valley ...

) regulates conduct in much the same way that

legal code A code of law, also called a law code or legal code, is a systematic collection of statutes. It is a type of legislation that purports to exhaustively cover a complete system of laws or a particular area of law as it existed at the time the co ...

(or "East Coast Code", referring to

Washington, D.C. Washington, D.C., formally the District of Columbia and commonly known as Washington or D.C., is the capital city and federal district of the United States. The city is on the Potomac River, across from Virginia, and shares land borders with ...

) does. More generally, Lessig argues that there are actually four major regulators (Law, Norms, Market, Architecture) each of which has a profound impact on society and whose implications must be considered (sometimes called the " pathetic dot theory", after the "dot" that is constrained by these regulators.) The book includes a discussion of the implications for

copyright law A copyright is a type of intellectual property that gives its owner the exclusive legal right to copy, distribute, adapt, display, and perform a creative work, usually for a limited time. The creative work may be in a literary, artistic, e ...

, arguing that

cyberspace Cyberspace is an interconnected digital environment. It is a type of virtual world popularized with the rise of the Internet. The term entered popular culture from science fiction and the arts but is now used by technology strategists, security ...

changes not only the technology of copying but also the power of law to protect against illegal copying. It goes so far as to argue that code displaces the balance in copyright law and doctrines such as fair use. If it becomes possible to license every aspect of use (by means of trusted systems created by code), no aspect of use would have the protection of

fair use Fair use is a Legal doctrine, doctrine in United States law that permits limited use of copyrighted material without having to first acquire permission from the copyright holder. Fair use is one of the limitations to copyright intended to bal ...

. The importance of this side of the story is generally underestimated and, as the examples in the book show, very often, code is even (only) considered as an extra ''tool'' to fight against "unlimited copying."

Other books

'' The Future of Ideas'' is a continuation of ''Code's'' analysis of copyright, where Lessig argues that too much long term copyright protection hampers the creation of new ideas based on existing works, and advocates the importance of existing works entering the

public domain The public domain (PD) consists of all the creative work to which no Exclusive exclusive intellectual property rights apply. Those rights may have expired, been forfeited, expressly Waiver, waived, or may be inapplicable. Because no one holds ...

quickly.

Revision

In March 2005, Lessig launched th
Code V.2 Wiki
to update the book with current information, which he then adapted into a second edition of the book, '' Code: Version 2.0'', in 2006.

Influence

The book has been widely cited, and Lessig has repeatedly achieved top places on lists of most-cited law school faculty. It has been called "the most influential book to date about law and cyberspace", "seminal", and in a critical essay on the book's 10th anniversary, author

Declan McCullagh Declan McCullagh is an American entrepreneur, journalist, and software engineer. He is the CEO and co-founder, with computer scientist Celine Bursztein, of Recent Media Inc., a startup in Silicon Valley that has built a recommendation engine and ...

(subject of the chapter "What Declan Doesn't Get") said it was "difficult to overstate the influence" of the book.

References

{{Lawrence Lessig 1999 non-fiction books Books about the Internet Works about intellectual property law Copyright law literature Books by Lawrence Lessig

Summary

Other books

Revision

Influence

See also

References