NEGATIVE – CONSUMER/INTERNET

NEGATIVE — CONSUMER/INTERNET — SIGNIFICANCE� 394

TRADITIONAL COMMUNICATIVE CONCEPTS DO NOT APPLY IN CYBERSPACE

CYBERSPACE IS SO NEW AND DIFFERENT OLD CONSTITUTIONAL WAYS OF THINKING DO NOT APPLY

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

Because cyberspace, Prof Lessig argues, really is different, it poses dilemmas not faced before. "The questions raised by the future are issues that were not decided in the past," he writes. Some can be resolved simply, by translating the US Constitution to a new cyber-context; but in other areas "the words of the framers will not carry us far".

TRADITIONAL COMMUNICATIVE VALUES WILL NOT AUTOMATICALLY APPLY TO CYBERSPACE

Since the dawn of time, technologies have emerged to threaten old values. Often the threat is more apparent than real; in the end, the same old rules survive to guide us through a new reality.

But this time, things may be different. Real-world values will not automatically migrate to cyberspace. Unless we actively choose to transport them there, technology may make its own choices - and create a society where liberty, privacy, free speech and all the ancient freedoms are compromised forever.

This is a potted version of the argument presented in more subtle form by Lawrence Lessig, Harvard law professor and pre-eminent theorist of the internet.