FC: Larry Lessig replies; Gerard Vanderleun on technoblather

[Declan McCullagh <declan () well com>]

I've been asked if I am offended by Larry's domain name and chapter title.
I am
not; I am amused. But thanks for the offers of support and of registering
what-larry-doesnt-get.com, folks. 

An alternate URL to his book's web site:
 http://code-is-law.org

-Declan


> Date: Tue, 16 Nov 1999 20:35:17 +0100 
> Subject: replies 
> From: Lawrence Lessig 
> To: Declan McCullagh 
>
>
> Declan,
>
> The argument of my book is that libertarians (and anyone one who values
> constitutional democracy) face two threats, not one. They face the threat of
> bad (in the sense of liberty threatening) laws and the threat of bad (in the
> sense of liberty threatening) code. I'm against an attitude that focuses on
> the former only. While we obsess about bad laws, there is more and more bad
> code. And as I sketch in the first part of the book, this bad code will make
> it extremely easy for the government to use the net to regulate more. The
> focus of anyone who wants to defend the liberties of the original net (as
> opposed to those who want to suck up to commerce) must be on the
architecture
> of the net, and on whatever forces are acting to change it. (It's the
> architecture, stupid, which was the target of the first link you provided in
> your most recent post, not my book.. See
> <http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/works/lessig/MB.html> (and what's wrong with
> target=_blank pages?)
>
> Those forces may well be government (as the recent example of the FBI trying
> to bully the IETF suggests), but they may just as well be commerce (see,
> e.g., AT&T's architecting away ISP competition , or Intel's chip ID, or
> Windows 2000 Intellectual Property management system, or RealAudio's code
for
> snooping your hard disk). Liberty must be defended on both fronts. Bad code
> can be as bad as (and sometimes worse than) bad law. See
> <http://code-is-law.org>.
>
> So, when the anonymous "attorney" (here to tell us about net business) says
> that I predicted a future where life in cyberspace was life with internal
> passports, he is right. (He is wrong to say I skipped the Soviets -- my
story
> was about how the Bolsheviks repealed the Czarist regulations and then
> reinstated them under Stalin.) I do think that could well be the future. Not
> because this is the "nature of ... code." As I try to teach my
> attorney-larvae, code has no "nature." Whether the code of cyberspace
enables
> a ID-rich internet is a choice. And my claim is that without government's
> help, commerce is building an ID-enabled cyberworld. That's what the Intel
> chip was to aid; that's what Windows 2000 will enable; that's what digital
> certificate architectures are promising; that's what cookies facilitates.
> That's the future -- at least if we think only about how government
regulates
> the net, and not about how (increasingly corporate) code writes regulate as
> well. 
>
> My aim, contrary to anonymous "Damn! Prof. Lessig needs a life" (right about
> that at least)'s suggestion, is not just to criticize. Everything up to the
> last 5 pages of this 230 page book is arguing that people need to see how
the
> code is law, and need to do something about it when code-writers change the
> code to threaten its original values. That the mindless conflation of
> "liberty" with "laissez faire" will give us (as Tom Maddox argued 3 years
> ago) a commerce controlled net, which it turn will simply make it easier for
> the government to control behavior on the net. 
>
> There are ways to resist this. Contrary to Eric Dixon's claim, I did not say
> the only way to resist it is through "government." As I argue in one
chapter,
> the free or open source software movements are good ways to limit the power
> of government to regulate (it is easier to regulate closed code than open
> code). And when that is not enough, then I do argue that we need other ways
> to resist-- including, at times,  government itself.
>
> But I say that not because I am a suck up to government. The book is filled
> with lament about the pathetic state of our own government. I think we
can do
> something about that pathetic state, however, and that we should if we want
> to preserve the freedoms of the net you and I first came to know. 
>
> I confess I don't get Mr. deTreaux's point. (I do agree with him that you
> remind me more of Christopher Robin than Eeyore; you kind of look like
> Christopher Robin; I'm happy to take the role of Eeyore in this debate.)
Here
> he proudly tells you about his government support for educating the public
> about the dangers of Y2K, about how "the government and all the major
> industry" have "pulled together" on y2k. I say, good for them, and more of
> it. My point was that government could do more, not that it shouldn't do
> more. In particular, if the government hadn't made it so easy for
> corporations to waive liability for bad code, there would have been better
> incentives 10 years ago to solve this problem.
>
> Finally, Anonymous "Damn! Prof. Lessig ..." seemed concerned that I might
> have offended you by the domain name. I trust I haven't, as I recall you
> telling my publisher you were "tickled to see [yourself] mentioned, of
> course," (in the same email where you pointed out that I had stupidly
> misspelled your name.) If I have offended you, however, I'd be happy to give
> you the domain name. Maybe a good place for a corrections list?
>
>
> -- 
> Lessig
> (9/1/99-7/31/00)
> Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin
> Wallotstraße 19
> 14193 Berlin
> Germany
> 011.49.30.89001.351 (vx home)
> 011.49.30.89001.235 (vx office)
> 001.49.30.89001.300 (fx)
> 419.831.9295 (fax)
> <http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/lessig.html>
> <http://code-is-law.org>
> <mailto:lessig () pobox com>





> Date: Thu, 11 Nov 1999 12:50:02 -0500
> Subject: TECHNOBLATHER! IT'S ALIVE! ALIVE!
> From: Gerard Vanderleun <gerard.vanderleun () generalmedia com>
> To: <declan () well com>
>
> Ah yes!
> The Technoblatherers are always looking to cash in on a little
> bit more of that old time religion!
>
> I note that not only is Lessig a blatherer
> ( see www.earthportals.com/blather.html )
> but a Net Coward as well since we only get
> the Insulting title and two pdf files to read -- lazy man --
> but there is not discussion or feedback provision.
>
> These dweebs. They really piss me off.




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