AFFIRMATIVE-CONSUMER/INTERNET-DISADVANTAGE ANSWERS� 379

CYBERSPACE MUST BE REGULATED IN ORDER TO REMAIN FREE

CYBERSPACE MUST BE REGULATED IN ORDER TO BE FREE

PATTI WALDMEIR, Financial Times (London), March 20, 2000, SECTION: COMMENT & ANALYSIS; Pg. 15 TITLE: When internet freedom means control: The architecture of cyberspace could compromise privacy and free speech// acs-VT2001

It is all a matter of "code": the software and hardware that rules the internet. Code can create either a world of perfect freedom or "a world of perfect regulation", says Prof Lessig. It can guarantee that no one knows who you are, where you go, what you read, what you say, or what you buy in cyberspace. Or it can do exactly the opposite.

"We can build, or architect, or code cyberspace to protect values that we believe are fundamental, or we can build, or architect, or code cyberspace to allow those values to disappear," he says. Up to now, we have avoided these hard choices, thinking that cyberspace could take care of itself. Prof Lessig argues persuasively that it can not.

LEFT TO ITSELF, CYBERSPACE WILL BECOME A PERFECT TOOL FOR SOCIAL CONTROL

PATTI WALDMEIR, Financial Times (London), March 20, 2000, SECTION: COMMENT & ANALYSIS; Pg. 15 TITLE: When internet freedom means control: The architecture of cyberspace could compromise privacy and free speech// acs-VT2001

His premise is that the conventional wisdom about cyberspace is mistaken: the online world is not, by nature, a place of perfect freedom and anonymity, which (because it is both stateless and virtual) can never be ruled or regulated.

Quite the opposite: the technological structure or "architecture" of cyberspace makes it vulnerable to a degree of regulation never before imagined. "Left to itself, cyberspace will become a perfect tool of control," he writes.