It follows that what we will be able to do in the future will be determined by code that will be written tomorrow, and we should be thinking about who will determine what this code will be. Even more important, this invisible code has been written by people we did not elect and who have no formal obligations to us, such as the members of the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) or the more recently-developed Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN). So while the libertarians among us rail against the idea of government, our freedoms in cyberspace are being determined by an invisible structure that is every bit as restricting as any laws that can come out of a legislature, legitimate or not. What we can and can't do there is governed by the underlying code of all of the programs that make up the Internet, which both permit and restrict. While we tend to assume that what is in cyberspace is a given, in fact everything there is a construction based on decisions made by people. Lessig argues that the Internet is moving away from its early ideals of freedom, anonymity and decentralization. It only has code-the software and hardware that make cyberspace what it is. Now, this 2006 book is a rewritting of a 1999 book, so today it's rather dated in its more technical details. It is not in the nature of cyberspace to be unregulable cyberspace has no nature. It is a fairly simple concept: since cyberspace is entirely human-made, there are no natural laws to determine its architecture. The book tackles a very interesting topic: regulation in the age of cyberspace. Although the book is named Code and Other Laws of Cyberspace, Lessig uses this theme sparingly.
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