If you want to read more of this great book.
One: code is law
In the way that this book is not written so much for the tech-savvy but for more of a less technologically inclined. It begins with a similar story detailing different states and constitutions being forced on other emerging nations with no real idea why a constitution works for the US. In particular is the case of Russia, the loss of Communism and the emergence of a kind of libertarianism. “Power didn’t disappear – it shifted from the state to the Mafiosi, themselves often created by the state.” Lessig then leaves the metaphor to continue with a brief talk of cyberspace. Often seen as a more extreme version of a freedom from control (gov’t, anarchy, decentralized power etc.). One difference is that this cyber society was “built from the bottom-up” and self-ordering. So then, is the overarching question put forth: “Why was cyberspace incapable of regulation?” In a 1984-esqe way, the word itself denotes a “perfect control” while many celebrate its “perfect freedom.” The unique perspective of the author as a lawyer allows him to look at cyberspace and wonder if it can have its own control. As far as a constitution is a framework for the workings of a government, there is a constitution being laid down with guidance from commerce and gov’t, which will make cyberspace control easy. As the lengthy chapter ends, it delves into a look at understanding how the code that regulates is not laws and legal means but rather through the hardware and software that the Internet is built on.
Two: four puzzles from cyberspace.
This chapter picks up with examples from a game, in which it is suggested that some people, mainly from an older generation, see the Internet as only a source of information and not as having a life of its own. It is tough for someone who doesn’t know what they are missing to realize what they are missing, so this book serves as a good bridge between the printed word and virtual reality. “Second Life” is a game that is very literal for the readers, it functions as essentially a small part of the Internet Cosmos but is a place where its inhabitants have a second life digitally. The first story is about destroying the assumptions that we make in real life, that things have definite and persistent qualities. Things created in virtual reality can have different qualities attached to them. A book can fly (so can people too in Second Life), and death isn’t really death in our real world sense. Other things are the same, people communicate through typed words and speak to each other, get mad and work together. It also shows how code can change rules, like changing code so that a product is only usable by the person who purchases the product/service. Story two is largely about the idea that things do not exist locally in one place. A website about Indiana may be located on servers in Denmark. It begins to show how typical thinking fails to account for this property, especially in regards to the legal system. If a US citizen steals from someone is Europe on a trip, the person is subject to Europe’s laws. In other words, the states’ sovereignty is a fundamental concept that does not exist fully in cyberspace. The third story is about privacy, something we take for granted in most real life cases; it can be destroyed by a clever Internet detective when a person posts in an online community. Because of the way the site is coded, it was not hard in the example to figure out the person’s identity that was posting the stories. The last story is about the reach of a government’s hands into the lives of those on the Internet. We enjoy many freedoms in the US; that if someone from law enforcement searches your house, they need a warrant. On the Internet, a computer can be searched without most users ever knowing and left undamaged afterword. Is it okay for this kind of search to happen without any suspicion? These all serve to open up the readers mind to how the Internet can work. It also parallels ideas that some might not understand, that we work towards nebulous goals in real life too that we cannot touch, just as people in cyberspace. “Is freedom inversely related to the efficiency of the available means of surveillance?”
Three: is-ism: is the way it is the way it must be
Much of our vocabulary doesn’t apply directly to language found in our laws: “nature, essence, innate.” One of the main points is that right now “there is certainly a way that cyberspace is.” There is no single thing that defines what the Internet it. Many architectures exist within the Internet but the Internet could be made up of many more in the future. The Internet is reflexive and it can mirror the values of the people that are its inhabitants. So if the people that are using a certain network need a high level of control to make sure people aren’t illegally using the Internet, that sort of network would need a fair bit of authentication so that the network operator will know and track everything a user does on the network. Likewise if the network administrator feels that the Internet is not a place that should be regulated, then that network would probably have a lot less authentication. This is inherent to the bias of the design of a network. We use a control to get to the Internet everyday: TCP/IP. It is a set of agreed upon rules that all computers accessing the network will abide. At another level, the protocols require very little authentication, I can still be on the Internet posing as a middle-aged man or as a girl and be neither. This is very different from the real world where we enjoy a different sort of authentication. When I go the bank to cash a check and it is filled out with a woman’s name, and I am clearly male, the teller would naturally ask for ID. The ID is a multi-level authentication, my name would match their records and my picture would match, and most likely in most states, would also have a signature. Put succinctly “…there is no simple way to know who someone is, where they are from, and what they’re doing.”
Four: architecture of control
The original design wasn’t done with control in mind. So people could be anonymous because it wasn’t important to regulate the internet. Part of the problem too, is that most objects in life can be replicated. The same holds true for credentials, I can forge headers in email and make the receiver think they are from the government. I can make my computers IP address appear to be the same as any users (almost). To this end, we have credentials, drivers licenses and passports both give “…a relatively high level of confidence about the facts asserted…” that the information is about you. It is true that everyone would benefit from better authentication to prove who a user is on the Internet. We could better control our bank accounts and more efficient business. The problem is that these enable some to exert more control if the architectures are designed in a particular way. Essentially the Internet was designed to be the way it is today the “network philosophy pushes complexity to the edge of the network – to the applications that run on the network, rather than they network’s core.” This keeps the Internet efficient and free to route traffic versus having to code new versions of the Internet to build things in like IM capability and new media features. It is easy to forget that many different computers are handling our data as it moves end-to-end and thus, can be seen by many eyes. With business looking to capitalize more and more on the Internet, industries like marketing want to link behavior and identity to specific people. There is also growing concern of not just privacy but of how information about users is stored. It would be catastrophic if someone managed to download a list of unencrypted users and passwords from Amazon.com. But the data needs to be in a database (or many) to make it easy for the user to not have to re-type all their purchasing data when shopping. One easy solution to some of the problems is encryption except that it makes things harder to regulate while keeping more inaccessible to prying eyes.
Five: regulating code
Technological advances in regards to Internet commerce have also helped the government with their regulation. One way to help agencies like law enforcement is the CALEA to design one type of network that can be more easily monitored by the government. In this indirect way, the code is being regulated because of the law passed. Another avenue being pursued is through encryption with a twist, a backdoor that the government can use to look at the data being sent. They can regulate encryption systems and indirectly regulate the information people are sending. This is purely because of the way the Internet is designed. No system is perfect but through some laws with limited scope, the bad behaviors and crimes can be better weeded out though these actions. Also introduced by the government is digital ID’s that provide a sort of personal database where only the needed information is provided to a website. Along with this idea is also a visual of the citizen to better facilitate traceability. Then the chapter moves to a sort of summary of how these codes differ, the code of law and the code of the Internet. The problems lie in that we have dealt with security on the web for a drop in the bucket compared to private property, Internet code has about 200 years of catching up to do. The chapter moves on to Z-theory that the terror will incite change, just like the patriot act after 9/11 the increase in incidents involving viruses and security will spurn radical change. As these changes are put in place though, so does the ability to subvert the good intentions. Thus, “we must ask of every exercise of power: Why?” Ideally this works, but as we all have had some exposure to political lobbyists and special interest groups, sometimes people ask question’s a lot later after acting.
