Code 2.0

Synopsis

Lawrence Lessig's "Code and Other Laws of Cyberspace" v1 quickly began to define a certain vocabulary for thinking about the regulation of cyberspace. More than any other social space, cyberspace would be controlled or not depending upon the architecture, or "code," of that space. And that meant regulators, and those seeking to protect cyberspace from at least some forms of regulation, needed to focus not just upon the work of legislators, but also the work of technologists.Code version 2.0 updates the original work. It is not, as Lessig writes in the preface, a "new work." The aim of the update was to recast the argument in the current context, and to clarify the argument where necessary. While Lessig himself has strong views about preserving important liberties that cyberspace originally protected, this book does not push any particular set of values. Unlike Lessig's other books, The Future of Ideas, and Free Culture, this book has no particular political agenda. Instead, the objective of Code is to introduce and defend a particular way of understanding regulation, and to describe the trend that we should expect regulation in cyberspace to take.Code v2 is published under the terms of the CC Attribution-ShareAlike license. Money raised from the sale of this book supports the development of free software and documentation.