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Code: Version 2.0

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You can download this book at no charge in pdf format from Lessig's site.

If you take Web 2.0 at all seriously then, whatever your political or philosophical persuasion, Larry Lessig's Code: Version 2.0 is a compulsory read. My own political and philosophical persuasion is considerably different from Lessig's and consequently I don't entirely agree with either his conclusions or the weight he attaches to some of his concerns, but I still take my hat off to his methodological and philosophical achievement: Code: Version 2.0 presents a novel and undoubtedly striking re-evaluation of some fundamental social, legal and ethical conceptions and makes an entirely persuasive case that our traditional, deeply-held, and politically entrenched ways of looking at the world simply aren't fit for purpose any more.

Intellectually, this is therefore an extraordinary, eye-opening, paradigm shifting, challenging, exhilarating read. (I note some previous comments that this is a book for lawyers: I'm a lawyer, so perhaps that explains my enthusiasm, but this is no ordinary legal text, and should be of interest to anyone with a political, philosophical or scientific bone in their body.)

Lawrence Lessig charts, with a fair bit of technical specificity, the technical and epistemological grounds for thinking that the internet revolution (and specifically the "Web 2.0" revolution) is as significant as any societal shift in human history. Generally, this is not news for people in the IT industry - who deal with its implications day to day - but for our legal brethren, who tend of be of a conservative (f not technophobic) stripe, this ought to be as revelatory (and revolutionary) as Wat Tyler's march on London. Now we have a hyperlinked, editable digital commons, the assumptions with which we have constructed our society need to be rethunk.

For example, copyright: a law framed in the pre-digital era where there was no ready means to replicate "content" which didn't itself involve considerable labour and expense, it made sense to protect intellectual property in this way. But faced with the new commercial imperatives of the digital age, Lessig argues compellingly that the existing legal framework simply cannot apply, that any attempt to fit it to the new social reality which, QED, must have been beyond the contemplation of the framers of the law is a creative (and therefore potentially illegitimate) legal/political act. Down this path, Lessig's arguments have more interest for consitutional lawyers and may lead the lay reader a little cold.

Lessig provides us with an alternative framework for discussing legal issues like copyright, intellectual property protection and privacy, and is convincing that our old tools for conversing on these issues - which predate the digital revolution in its entirely, let alone the internet revolution or Web 2.0 - just won't give us useful answers to our conundrums. Lessig also re-opens the book on what even counts as law - what we mean by "regulability" - in an environment online where the power exists, by computer code, to create "laws" of a more natural kind - that are laws not because they *should* or *may* not be broken, but because they *cannot* be broken.

Lessig's startling conclusion is therefore to reject entirely the utopian wish, frequently expressed by citizens of the net, that traditional legal controls are dead and that Web 2.0 vouchsafes to us an eternal state of libertarian bliss - but to assert that, quite to the contrary, Web 2.0 is, to use his own ghastly expression, "architected" to allow maximum conceivable regulation, and that activities online are capable of a total regulation that, offline, would never have been feasible. Lessig warns therefore that we stand (or at any rate approach) important political crossroads where the public decisions we make as a community about how we allow internet architecture to develop will have a huge bearing on the development of cyberspace - and therefore our rights and personhood in cyberspace - for the hereafter.

Among the fascinating ideas here, which have application way beyond the legal and digital realms, is the "end-to-end principle", by which the internet is (ugh) architected, which says that for a distributed system to be maximally effective there should be the minimum complexity in the basic network necessary to provide common structure to all users so that they can use the information as flexibly as they want: the complexity should therefore be at the edges of the system and in the hands of the user. Thus the core wiring of the internet is a rudimentary router of tiny packets of data which are then assembled by the end user (in a browser or other application). But the same principle applies to physical transport networks (a road system has less intrinsic complexity than a rail system, for example: the complexity on a road network is pushed to the edge and manifests itself in the vehicles we drive: on a rail network by contrast the train is part of the network), and indeed political and social networks (a liberal political regime has less intrinsic complexity than an interventionist one - the complexity is pushed to the edges of the network and users build that amongst themselves). I thought this was a profound insight, and perhaps has implications beyond the scope of Lessig's thesis, and if properly considered have the effect of mitigating some of the alarm he feels.

Just as he rightly brings the utopians to book for believing their hype about this golden new age of freedom - of course governments and vested interests will figure out the net and how to effectively regulate it, like they have every other social revolution since Wat Tyler's time - I think his own vision is needlessly dystopian. It assumes that code will be able, at some point, to regularly, systematically, reliably and effortlessly know every single fact about every one of us - and hence we are ultimately regulable.

But this isn't realistic. Just as it would be impossible to accurately predict the trajectory of a crisp packet blown across St Mark's Square, no matter how sophisticated your equipment and scientific knowledge, the web is too weird, people's applications for it too dynamic and unpredictable and the "true meaning" of our communications too innately susceptible of multiple interpretations for any code to ever fully get the better of us (not even really close). For example, in my organisation I have spent months, with considerable IT infrastructural support, trying to figure how to reliably capture simple, non-controversial attributes of regular documents which routinely and predictably pass between an easily identified and small community of users across a tightly defined and fully monitored part of our internal computer system - and this has proved so far to be quite impossible. The idea that one might reliably capture deliberately masked communications even from this minute sample seems absurd, and the idea that one could do this across the whole world wide web preposterous.

Just as the spammers and virus programmers keep ahead of the filters, our freedom is adaptable and valuable enough to keep ahead of the Man.

Well, that's the hope, anyway. But in the mean time this book is certainly food for thought. It could not be more highly recommended by this reviewer.

Olly Buxton

Professor Lessig describes how managing copyright for the digital age will have an impact upon every individual in the future. As we develop and share digitial content how we protect or even abuse copyright will determine if the Internet and other digital technologies will improve information for the global citizen. We stand at the door of one of the greatest era in history, however, how we use and protect digitial information will determine how history will judge our efforts for generations to come. Lessig's book gives us the foundation to build upon and will be up to each individual to determine the final outcome.

Code Version 2.0 (CV2) is a compelling and insightful book. Author Lawrence Lessig is a very deep thinker who presents arguments in a complete and methodical manner. I accept his thesis that "cyberspace" has abandoned its tradition as an ungovernable, anonymous playground and risks becoming the most regulated and "regulable" "place" in which one could spend any time. This position has been strengthened by recent news events, such as the White House's "National Strategy for Trusted Identities in Cyberspace (NSTIC) that outlines this vision to reduce cybersecurity vulnerabilities through the use of trusted digital identities." Lessig maintains that code is making such regulation possible, and anyone who cares about privacy and freedom needs to start paying attention.

Another interesting theme the author discusses involves the nature of decision making in the US Constitution. When encountering a difficult case, it's not enough to think in terms of original intent or expanding beyond the Constitution. Justices must resolve questions not necessarily considered when the Constitution was written. For example, regarding the Fourth Amendment's prohibition against "unreasonable searches and seizures," did the Founders include the amendment because searches and seizures as practiced in their time were burdensome? If searches and seizures were not a burden (such as one might argue is the case with digital inquiries), does that invalidate the Fourth Amendment with respect to digital searchers? Or, must one interpret the Fourth Amendment as meaning the Founders sought to protect privacy in any circumstance, and the burden applies regardless of the nature of the search? Before reading CV2 I thought about such questions in much more naive terms. Lessig helped me consider the issues in a more subtle manner.

Lessig also emphasizes the interaction among the market, architecture, law, and societal norms. All of these exert influence, and policymakers can choose to apply different elements as required.

I had only a few minor criticisms. I agree with some reviewers that the book is a little wordy and perhaps too long. The author warns the reader at the beginning of the book, so beware! Also, the author is a little shaky regarding technical details. On p 54, he mistakenly says IPv6 requires encryption; this is a common misconception. IPv6 as a standard and implementation includes encryption, but it need not be enabled and is in fact not enabled by default. On pp 55-6 he seems to think Nmap is a powerful tool for "monitoring" networks, but really it is a network-based discovery and reconnaissance tool. Finally, he wonders on p 76 "what's stopping cyber-Armageddon"? The answer is simple: there's no money in it!

Overall I think readers who want to understand more about digital security and privacy debates should read CV2. You will be surprised by how relevant it is in 2010.

This is a very well thought out book. A must read for anyone interested in a framework on how to think through some of the challenges facing our society in a web 2.0 world. As an Internet Lawyer trained at Stanford Law School, I was especially excited to read Prof. Lessig's thought. As always, he did not disappoint.

Amazing how forward thinking this was.
Larry gets the complex ideas across in a way that is very fun to read.

Before Larry Lessig began teaching a course on "cyberlaw" in the 1990s, few people knew this awkward term for "regulation of the Internet." But Lessig, now a professor at Stanford Law School, has always kept close to the bleeding edge of technology. He started programming in high school and later helped the U.S. Supreme Court go digital. Even this book's development shows the author's geek //bona fides:// He revised it using a "wiki," a software platform that allows multiple users to edit the text simultaneously via the Web. While the book's details have changed a bit since the first edition, Lessig's main point is the same. Because of its design, the Internet is perhaps the most "regulable" entity imaginable and, unless its users are careful, it will morph into something that diminishes, rather than enhances, liberty. Moreover, trying to keep the Internet "unregulated" is folly. While this book is sometimes bloated and repetitive, we find that it is still required reading for anyone who cares about the social impact of the most important technology since electrification.

For all the accolades this book has received it is perfectly summarized in the New York Times review above. The rest is commentary; it is long, boring, at times confused, and thoroughly repetitive. Lessig has stretched a 20 minute power point presentation into a book. Save your money and download the free version or better yet, just read the New York Times review and you can spare yourself the tedium of this obtuse and turgid volume.

This is an important subject ans deserves a lot more attention.

However, it was clearly written by a lawyer for lawyers. I am a software engineer and read many books in my field - but alas was unable to finish this one - important as it is. Its just way to wordy - if it was reduced in size by at least half - and highlighted the salient points clearly and simply - its would be a much better book IMHO.

If your a lawyer you'll like this book - but anyone else - look elsewhere.

Sorry lawerence.