> 1. regulation through network architecture (code)
> 2. societal regulation (what is considered appropriate social behavior)
> 3. the market costs associated with maintaining parts of the Internet
> 4. the law
It sounds like what Lessig is proposing is whole cloth oversight of the Internet, presumably by some government entity up to and including monitoring speech and the way the actual internet is built and used. "To protect freedom on the Net."
I always associate Lessig with the Creative Commons family of licenses. When he was first formulating these licenses, I had a publisher return the rights of my Java AI book to me because I was doing a startup and didn’t have time to do a new edition.
I chose a Creative Commons license and released my revised book. Lessig sent me several emails over that time period and I was the featured Creative Commoner on their web site for a few months.
I still release all of my new books with a CC share and share alike, no commercial reuse license.
I personally like and use CC licensed material, even contributing very small bits here and there. To your point this is probably Lessig's greatest accomplishment.
His desire for government intervention on the internet at every level is a bridge way too far though.
Sounds like pretty basic observation of society, as in people are driven by:
1. What what they can do -- the tools.
2. What others do.
3. Costs / benefits.
4. What hurts -- laws and consequences of not following the law.
I wouldn't be surprised students of sociology would have better models to describe this.
There probably is. And this book is a little relatively old. If you read the book though, many of the solutions/policies proposed were considered an abhorration in 2006 and are still not so palatable even today. I fear he'll eventually get his way.
They do. One of the most powerful behavior-modulating mechanisms is reality building. Think of the folks who self-censor imagination because Truth/Reality/Nature align with their views. "That's just how things are" is more powerful than laws, norms, or costs. In fact the acceptance of laws norms and costs as legitimate rest firmly on legal realism, social realism, and economic realism - all flavors of the same substrate.
Lessig was arguing, back in 2006[0], that privatized ownership of code would effectively create privatized legislation - i.e. corporations could write their own laws by just making the machines not do certain things they don't want done. Since code still has to exist, we can't exactly remove this mechanism of control. And capitalist ownership and the corporate form it loves so much is a brutal dictatorship bounded only by the fact that some people can leave if they have the money to do so. So the mere existence of software and corporations equals little kings running around extending their freedom to swing their arm directly into your solar plexus.
Since Code was published, the government has largely not regulated the tech sector at all, and the end result is that the tech sector wrote its own laws to benefit itself. This is where we get tech companies that operate more like religions[1] whose commandments include "thou shalt have no third-party app distributor before me". In this way Lessig is prophetic.
>It sounds like what Lessig is proposing is whole cloth oversight of the Internet, presumably by some government entity up to and including monitoring speech and the way the actual internet is built and used. "To protect freedom on the Net."
Lessig is arguing that if we don't subject Apple and Google to constitutional oversight, they'll just write their own constitution and use the existing one as toilet paper. I don't understand how you go from that to sardonic scarequotes.
[0] Code was published earlier than this, largely as a reaction to DMCA 1201, the linked article is for the 2006 update
[1] Dictators love state religions because it lets them use control over the law to control social regulations. It's one thing to ban something you don't like and another to convince people they will go to hell if they evade the ban.
It’s hard to put corporations at the same level as the actual government when it comes to “how I am governed.” Corporations can’t (in general) put me in jail or issue fines against me if I don’t interact with them. I am not forced to do business with them or use their services. For example, I’m not a Twitter user, so nothing they write in their code “regulates” me, and nothing other Twitter users say affects my behavior.
"Government" is a monopoly on the use of force. When a corporation gains monopoly power they also become more like a government in that you don't have the ability to not do business with them.
Think of it like Comcast: if you want someone else's Internet service, then you have to move to another town or state, which is significantly more expensive than just changing companies. Twitter isn't the best example since people have been able to switch to other platforms, but there are still occupations where interacting with it is basically mandatory. Better examples would be Apple or Google - if you decide to completely cut both of those companies off, you are cut off from modern life.
Fresher readers might note how old this is. "Code and Other Laws of
Cyberspace" is a 1999 book by Lawrence Lessig. The linked summary is
by students of cyber-politics, where their mention of more
contemporary affairs makes it seem more up to date.
The impressive part is how prescient is Lessig in identifying points
of friction two decades ahead of time.
A few blind-spots we can now see:
1) That the structure and governance of the Internet might never
resolve into a stable, lawful and universally acceptable utility, but
that it remains forever a highly dynamic, unstable proxy battleground
for real-word geopolitical forces.
2) That governments and commerce might side together in a Faustian
pact against "people and society" to produce an Internet that is
entirely a mechanism for control and extraction to be fought against,
rather than through.
3) That AI would emerge making moot concepts of "identity", "truth",
and much more, so requiring a whole new set of legal and technical
concepts hitherto unparalleled in reality.
The title given here is highly misleading, and doesn't appear on the linked page either. The content is probably interesting, but it's not at all what I was looking for.
The correct title is probably "Code and Other Laws of Cyberspace".
The linked summary is pretty explicit about the four things governing online behavior, and not society overall. Online behavior is not society.
The first point of the four relates to networking infrastructure. Is parenting part of society? If so, what does networking infrastructure have to do with parenting?
The internet is "sovereign" in the only way that matters: it's hard to enforce regulations.
A country is sovereign if it can keep other countries from enforcing their will within it's borders. That's clearly not a clean yes or no.
Any regulations that can be enforced, apply, and those that can't, don't. The government can decide who is allowed to lay cable where, but deleting information from the network is basically impossible.
“Censoring the internet is like nailing jello to the wall,” because, “The internet interprets censorship as damage and censorship routes around it l,” eh?
I remember those sayings. I even remember saying them. So sure we were. But that’s not quite how things worked out is it? Sure, it’s difficult for a country to enforce its laws over every internet user everywhere, but it doesn’t have to. It just has to enforce it for the people inside its borders. It’s been 23 years since Bill Clinton made the jello remark as part of a speech arguing for permanent normal trade relations with China, I think the jury is back on this one. A country not only can, but does.
I’d argue you don’t even need a Great Firewall like China or Russia. Canada even got Facebook to follow its laws about subsidizing Canadian newsrooms by just putting ink to paper, albeit just not the way they hoped.
> The internet is "sovereign" in the only way that matters: it's hard to enforce regulations.
The internet is not sovereign in the only way that matters: it has no army.
As far as it being "hard" to control information flows, what do you think the international efforts to tie ID to internet access ("for the children") are for? It is porn today, and banks and Amazon tomorrow, and then you need burner accounts (or someone else's...) to do anything online without it being to your identity. And suddenly, information doesn't really feel like being so free anymore.
> Lessig believes the most effective form of regulation online is through architecture, “[online,] code is law” (pg 5).
I build internet architecture, and vastly different online regulation is performed on the same architectures. What actually regulates the online world is Terms of Use, which are in turn influenced and regulated by Law, such as Section 230. Every online service, resource, and community defines its own social, functional and technological regulations. But those regulations only hold as long as the Law allows it. Doesn't matter what the technical architecture is, the corporate interest that governs the terms of use is what defines how humans can interact with it (and each other).
> Because of the legal power code holds, Lessig cautions against the commercialization of code, which he believes will lead to the privatization of law and increased governmental control. [..] He also argues in favor of open-source code which, like the laws governing the natural world, can be examined by everyone.
We have seen many times now that just because the Source is Available does not mean that the Terms of Use do not impose their own regulations, often counter to those of the Open Source ethos. Yes, you can see the code. But you can't see what the moderators are/aren't doing behind the scenes to the users subjected to that code. In fact, the commercialization (or not) of code has had no effect on privatization and governmental control. The government still seeks to impose its will on the code, whether it's open or not. Companies commercialize Open Source code as a marketing buzzword now.
The code is just a building block, like a brick. Corporations and government will happily build a weapons factory out of transparent bricks, and then paint over the outside. If you want code to have an impact on society, the license must include ethics requirements.
>Lessig cautions against the commercialization of code, which he believes will lead to the privatization of law and increased governmental control. In response, Lessig proposes that we subject private entities to increased constitutional controls. He also argues in favor of open-source code which, like the laws governing the natural world, can be examined by everyone.
I think I understand his point? If we add regulation in the open, it is less likely that the government will privately exercise control over the internet by forming relationships with companies. This can be seen in the Twitter files, where we saw that the government had a private relationship with social media companies, and was using it to shut down and "investigate" people with problematic speech.
I don't think I really agree, but I can see how it connects to reality at least.
I appreciate his thoughtful analysis. These are thorny and complex issues. It's a bit odd that his prescription to avoid greater governmental control, is to employ greater governmental control over the internet. But he might be right, both in understanding the problem, and the way to address it.
The thing I don't get about this meme is why stop here? The reason BlackRock & co manage so much money and own so much stock in major companies is because people keep investing in their index funds. Isn't the ultimate problem all the individual investors and 401k holders that give them this influence by buying their funds? What does the alternative look like? Everyone managing individual stocks? More index fund providers?
For a while I had some money invested in a fund that passed all voting decisions to me. I put in what I think is substantially more effort than most people would, but the votes are so frequent, it takes such a long time to get an even rudimentary understanding of the company and the issues, and your influence is usually so infinitesimal that it just doesn't work. If you think it's unacceptable for Blackrock to have this much influence over its portfolio then I think it would be more realistic to just ban index funds rather than expect all Blackrock clients to participate in every proxy vote.
Blackrock has what appears to be a pretty good system for institutional investors that I think they should extend to everyone: https://www.blackrock.com/corporate/about-us/investment-stew.... This offers a middle ground between "take every vote" and "let Blackrock decide", where you can define a specific policy for common issues and let Blackrock take the actual votes according to that policy. I think a lot of people would take advantage of this and it would dilute a lot of Blackrock's power.
I'd love to see them implement a good liquid democracy system that would offer a better "middle ground between 'take every vote' and 'let Blackrock decide'."
I think most on HN understand that we give them the power, but the problem is we don't have much of a choice if we want to retire as the Fed's actions are leading to inflation at such a level where saving money is worthless.
I'm okay with them managing an index fund. It would seem wrong for them to then use that power to influence politicians and companies.
The main problem I can see with this is that international law is something that IMO is still in its infancy. International law is also something that usually isn't respected all that much by the major players of the world. And you can't trust even the first-world to make laws that are sane - that are free from malicious intent.
At least in the US, laws seem to be just made to control/monitor/limit the masses in increasingly more insidious ways. Besides basic gestures like gay marriage, I haven't personally witnessed or felt anything that impacted my life in a meaningful, positive way.
There is no universal bill of rights for humans - right to life, right to thrive, right to speech, right to be free/not a slave (such as proper work conditions) etc.
What is considered appropriate behavior is subjective, varies from person to person - from institution to institution - country to country, and too often laws often just end up being made as a reaction to maintain control. I'm not aware of many countries where I think democracy is a truly active process for everybody involved/affected and there are many countries that are hostile to some of the ideas I espouse.
And companies basically make all the standards on the web/computer. Although, thanks to players like Mozilla and OSS as a whole (and the good companies that truly embrace the OSS philosophy), there is resistance to this. Because of that, I'll hold out hope that we can figure out how to free the computer and web. IMO we are still at the drawing board phase for realizing computers/operating systems/a web that works for everybody, after all these years.
The only way any of this happens is if we 1) work on bettering diplomacy with other countries to even get to the starting point to realizing this - 2) encourage organized, civilized debate, denoted by tolerance and good faith, between many countries and individuals to determine what constitutes a minimum expected standard of living/draft a universal bill of rights for each and every citizen (this isn't the middle ages, we can do this) - 3) work on making all levels of education accessible, open, and free to every person willing to learn - imagine billions of people involved in problems and working towards solutions that work for society/their communities.
But, I will say to hell with worrying about "market costs of maintaining parts of the Internet". We need to heavily incorporate decentralization, open-source/free software, etc. into every facet of the computing ecosystem.
The average person shouldn't have to worry about backdoors - not knowing what every part of their computer is doing because of proprietary software/firmware, they should not have to be bombarded by advertisements and other attention/time-consuming dark patterns, and they shouldn't have to worry about the impersonal, but organized stalking/data collection of their every move they make using technology by those who are driven by greed, paranoia, and control.
Lessig is a bit of a crackpot. Extreme wealth, and the political power it bestows is so obvious and corrosive to the whole world. The capitalist system enslaves almost everyone on the planet, and Larry's out here theorizing about how we're going to live together on the internet.
I bought a shirt from his presidential campaign and frequently wear it when traveling through airports. Not once has anyone recognized it and I think that's a shame.
I think he correctly diagnosed that getting money out of politics is foundational to being able to make any sort of other lasting progress. I don't know why Democrat voters don't see that as the obvious direction that needs to be pursued to the exclusion of all else.
> I think he correctly diagnosed that getting money out of politics is foundational to being able to make any sort of other lasting progress.
No, its intermediary. Electoral reform (which doesn't require federal Constitutional reform and can be done by voter initiative in many states) foundational, because the breadth and depth of support by politicians for Cobstitutional reform necessary to deal with money in Congress is intractable otherwise.
> I don't know why Democrat voters don't see that as the obvious direction that needs to be pursued to the exclusion of all else.
Because enough Democratic voters understand why it is politically intractable currently (even if they don't always understand or live in states where they can do much about the steps for changing that), and because “to the exclusion of all else" is dumb, as there are lots of less intractable important problems and lots of irremediable harms that will be inflicted if other issues are neglected in a quixotic effort at finance reform.
Believing something is intractable is the first step in it becoming intractable.
Meanwhile, campaign finance reform is a prerequisite to actually solving any of those "less intractable" problems that never ever get solved because those issues are more financially valuable to the Democratic party leaders when left unresolved.
Example: the right to choose an abortion could have been codified into law for decades, but the risk of losing the right to an abortion was more valuable to Democratic leadership. Source: Andrew Yang
> Believing something is intractable is the first step in it becoming intractable.
Not understanding that and why a thing is temporarily intractable is the first step in making it permanently intractable.
> Example: the right to choose an abortion could have been codified into law for decades, but the risk of losing the right to an abortion was more valuable to Democratic leadership. Source: Andrew Yang
Andrew Yang is an idiot and/or liar on politics. Codifying the right ti abortion is a feelgood measure some Democrats wave around, but its never been a serious priority because it only slightly improves things while the Constitutional right itself stands (by providing wehatever additional recourse or sanction is in the statute), but fails as soon as the Constitutional right fails, because the only plausible argument for a federal power to protect the right to abortion is the enforcement clause of the 14th Amendment, which fails as soon as abortion is not within the scope of 14th Amendment rights already Constitutionally protected against state encroachment. Its not even a little bit of protection against a Supreme Court that would strike down abortion as a Constitutional right.
> A crackpot who ran in the 2016 presidential race to get money out of politics.
I mean, that's one of the least effective means available of working toward that goal (even for someone with the combination of skills and background to be a viable candidate), so I’m not sure why you'd raise it as if it undermined the crackpot claim.
Oh, sorry, my intent wasn't to claim he's not really a crackpot, just the the grandparent was making the claim that the reason why Lessig is a crackpot is because Lessig can not see the real issue here, which is campaign finance reform.
Anyone who has been slightly paying attention to American politics in the last decade or so would know that Lessig, of all people, is deeply aware of this issue. Lessig has been fighting and trying to make the issue of money in politics a thing for quite a long while.
If one has been actually following Lessig's career they'd know that Lessig has taken to the issue of money in politics because of his first great crusade, that of fixing Copyright for all net-denizens, and honestly the world.
I personally believe Lessig to be a smart, driven, and naive, man who has been fighting for the right things, even if no one will actually listen to him and take action on his suggestions.
Or maybe you just have a different theory of change? His seems to be that our best shot is to use whatever levers remain available in our nominal democracy to reduce the political power accruing to extreme wealth. What's yours?
Capitalism, over the last 50 years, has brought more people out of poverty globally than ever before. Since 1970, the number of people living in extreme poverty has fallen in both absolute numbers (total number of people) and relatively (% of people). In the 1970s, for the first time in human history, most people on the planet were not living in extreme poverty. This number accelerated in 1990, after the fall of Communism and the expansion of liberal economic policies.
Capitalism is the most positive economic force in human history and has saved billions of people from a low quality of life and dying in poverty
Capitalism is all of about 200 years old. It's a revolutionary idea. Previously, if a group of people wanted to pool capital for a venture, they had to have the support of the state or the church, usually one in the same. The US allowed for the pooling of capital for ventures that were purely for profit. The result was the rapid expansion of the country.
But that's the initial effect of a system that's relatively brand new. Now we're facing the constant conglomeration of ownership of capital, resources, and production. We used to push back against the monopolization of industry but we're losing that battle. And as anyone who's played a lot of Monopoly knows, it never ends well.
Capitalism results in many improvements, such as funding for research towards medicines that impact millions of people around the globe. However, capitalism overlooks many improvments such as funding research of medicines that only effect a few people - because that's not profitable enough.
The biggest failure of our model of capitalism thus far is that we have allowed the corporate takeover of our political system. Laws are now crafted by corporate lawyers and politicians spend all of their time raising more campaign funds for the next election cycle. Anyone we would actually want to vote into positions of leadership are overshadowed by corporate-sponsored puppets.
A democracy can not function without an informed populous. Our populous is informed by one of few corporate owned and controlled media channels. Since the telecommunications act of 1996, the quality of news reporting has plummeted and now pushes one of 2 available narratives, both equally fabricated.
Yes, capitalism was an amazing evolutionary step in society. But if we don't take the next step forward soon, we'll be taking a step backwards.
I don't see why the next step can't be more capitalism. The private ownership of property and the investment structure as it exists has resulted in billions of people being lifted out of poverty. Why wouldn't we want to continue doing that? Because people in America saw a relative decrease in buying power over a generation? Is the rest of the world supposed to stop improving the lives of their citizens?
> 2. societal regulation (what is considered appropriate social behavior)
> 3. the market costs associated with maintaining parts of the Internet
> 4. the law
It sounds like what Lessig is proposing is whole cloth oversight of the Internet, presumably by some government entity up to and including monitoring speech and the way the actual internet is built and used. "To protect freedom on the Net."
EDIT: Reminder that this book was published in 2006. You can read the whole thing in PDF form here: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Code_v2.pdf