Code: Version 2.0 [Paperback]

"Lawrence Lessig is a James Madison of our time, crafting the lineaments of a well-tempered cyberspace. This book is a primer of 'running code' for digital civilization. Like Madison, Lessig is a model of balance, judgement, ingenuity and persuasive argument." -- Stewart Brand

"Now available for the first time in the UK, this is the "alarming and impassioned" book on how the Internet is redefining constitutional law. This updated edition is the first popular book revised online by its readers" - "New York Times". There's a common belief that cyberspace cannot be regulated - that is, its very essence is immune from the government's (or anyone else's) control. "Code", first published in 2000, argues that this belief is wrong. It is not in the nature of cyberspace to be unregulable; cyberspace has no "nature". It only has code - the software and hardware that makes cyberspace what it is. That code can create a place of freedom - as the original architecture of the Net did - or a place of oppressive control. Under the influence of commerce, cyberspace is becoming a highly regulable space, where behaviour is much more tightly controlled than in real space. But that's not inevitable either. We can - we must - choose what kind of cyberspace we want and what freedoms we will guarantee. These choices are all about architecture: about what kind of code will govern cyberspace, and who will control it. In this realm, code is the most significant for of law, and it is up to lawyers, policymakers, and especially citizens to decide what values that code embodies. Since its original publication, this seminal book has earned the status of a minor classic. This second edition, or Version 2.0, has been prepared through the author's wiki, a web site that allows readers to edit the text, making this the first reader-edited revision of a popular book.

Lawrence Lessig is professor at Stanford Law School, and founder of the school's Center for the Internet and Society. Formerly a lawyer, he represented the web site developer Eric Eldred before the Supreme Court in a landmark case challenging the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension act. The author of Free Culture and The Culture of Ideas, in 2002 he was named one of Scientific American magazine's Top 50 visionaries. He lives in California.