Customer Reviews

Cyber Rights: Defending Free speech in the Digital Age

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I meant to identify myself by name as the media critic and author above..I'm Jon Katz and have written both for Wired and Hotwired. Godwin understands very well how much of fight it's been for the Net and the Web to remain free. That alone makes the book readable and important. This kind of freedom is always a fight, and Godwin's book an important tool in that fight. And I'm not a friend of his. I've exchanged some e-mails, but never met him. It's a very important and valuable book.

Possibly the best book on cyberspace legal and social issues I've ever read.

Godwin's book is basically a rehash of previously published work. Pages 171-176, for example, were originally published in an Internet World column, though he acknowledges that nowhere. In fact, the entire book consists of such retread material spliced together, sometimes seamlessly, sometimes not. Many readers who haven't followed the free speech wars won't recognize this; they may simply wonder why the book is occasionally disjointed for no apparent reason. The other significant flaw in the book is that it stops with the CDA decision, in June 1997. For a book published in late 1998, it could have covered later material, especially since most of the book was cut-and-paste rather than new writing. It's a reasonable introduction to the censorship wars on the internet for readers which are completely unfamiliar with the history; but as for me, I'm pleased that I checked this book out from the library rather than purchasing it. -- Michael Sims

One of the things I liked about this book was the way in which it addressed the ethics of online publication (don't spread bad memes, try to counter bad memes with good ones) with the First Amendment (which basically keeps government out of the meme-regulation process). In other words, policing the Net should be a matter of individual ethics rather than of legislation or prosecutions. I didn't find the messages of this book inconsistent at all -- it seems to me to be one of the goals of First Amendment advocacy to explain how free speech leads to good results. I think that anyone who approaches the book as a simple guide to online rights is missing the larger message, which is that there is a philosophy of free speech and privacy that has to shape how we deal with the Internet.

To me, this book was great backgrounder for the current fights over how and whether to regulate the Internet. In particular, the chapters about the legal issues and the social forces behind the Communications Decency Act explain pretty well what's going on now with the lawsuit against the CDA II.

I bought this despite my fear that it would turn out to be yet another dry discussion of the same familiar five or six cases (Cubby, Stratton-Oakmont, Reno ..) concerning online behavior and liability. As an in-house attorney for an Internet startup, I figured I'd better be prepared to discuss the book with management and investors, irrespective of its actual utility. To my delight, the book turns out to be legally accurate and entertaining. Godwin's book - unlike others in the field - also reveals the human and political factors behind the cases and arguments which have now become familiar. I wouldn't have minded if it was a little bit less first-person focused, but that's a small quibble about what's overall an interesting and valuable book.

I started off a review of a Bruce Sterling novel with a statement of full disclosure, so I must do the same here--even more so. Mike is a long-time friend from when I lived in Austin, Texas. He knew me, as they say, when. After my disastrous first year at the University of Texas, he helped me identify the classes to take that would awaken my interest (including Shakespeare at Winedale). Mike grilled me on my reading critically, forcing me to be able to talk about books on a level besides enjoyment. He was also the organizer of the Dull Men's Club, a regular meeting group for argument and drinking that often became similar to the Austin BBS Users Reading Group. Yes, I think it safe to say that he was, and still is, a friend.

As he explains his history in this book, Mike was in the right place at the right time interested in the right things. Mike's interest in electronic communication and constitutional law and his journalistic background all brought him to the attention of Mitch Kapor, who made his money with Lotus when they were known for a spreadsheet called 1-2-3. Kapor was forming a think tank to work on his pet project, the rights of people on the electronic frontier. This group eventually became the Electronic Freedom Foundation (EFF) and Mike Godwin was hired as its first employee to be its legal counsel.

Nearly ten years later, the world has changed. The EFF has been part of some historic court battles and media frenzy and Godwin was there at each step of the way. In Cyber Rights, he explains these issues by giving you his personal history and his involvement. I can't think of too many other people who could have written a book like this (although Bruce Sterling's The Hacker Crackdown comes close; Bruce, however, was never so intimately involved in his non-fiction). Mike's background as a journalist keeps this from being a snooze, even when the legal hair-splits start looking like a bad day at Supercuts. If anything, some people may be turned off by his relative informality. I thought it actually helped, by showing that these are not dry issues that only lawyers and civil libertarians can love. Mike is passionate that the future of our society lies in the battles we are fighting today regarding what we can and can not do on the Internet.

What freedom are we talking about? Those guaranteed to you in the First Amendment, specifically freedom of the press, where the Internet is showing itself to be a new medium, just as radio and TV were earlier. In radio and TV, this freedom was abridged because of the issues of access to a limited spectrum. The Internet, however, is almost limitless, even more so than newspapers and publishers, who heretofore have enjoyed the full benefit of First Amendment protection. The issues that come up in these debates include: libel, pornography, privacy, marketing, and copyright. The Internet has changed the ground rules on all of these, yet most legislation and court cases have tried to link the Internet to older traditional media (likely due to our legal practice of using case law precedents), whereas Godwin feels that a new media, a new press, requires different interpretations.

I liked this book so much that I spent part of last semester designing a composition unit around the book and a writing assignment that would use Godwin's issues as a baseline to discover how things have changed since he finished the book at the end of 1997. I did not realize when I designed the unit that I would get a chance to put it immediately into practice, but circumstances have enabled me to teach two months of a freshman composition course this next semester on "Writing in a Technological Age and we'll be tackling Godwin's issues in February (in March, we'll be looking at Geoff Ryman's Internet novel, 253). I went by the bookstore earlier this week and noticed that I'm not the only teacher who is requiring this book; a professor in the School for International Studies is also using it as a text.

Okay, you're likely not one of my students, so you aren't required to read this book, so why should you? If you use the Internet for business or pleasure, the topics discussed herein are directly applicable to your continued use of this resource. Godwin explains in simple terms why you should be concerned, what the difficult issues are, and what things are being overblown by Chicken Littles. If you've been following these issues closely, this is a good summary; if you don't know what I'm talking about at all, this is your introduction.

I was surprised at how accessible a book this was. Although I'm familiar with cyberspace issues, I found even the handling of the issues I know to be informative and insightful. The progression of the book toward a conclusion in the defeat of the Communications Decency Act seems like a natural choice -- especially for a book that is framed as the memoir of a particular struggle to get freedom of speech recognized for cyberspace.

As someone who approached this book "blind" -- it was sent to me by an admirer who wants me to join his BBS -- I have to say I was pleasantly surprised. The first two chapters were hard for me to relate to, but I really enjoyed it once I got into it. A very informative and useful book, actually, especially if you are not the most wired person in the world. Accessible and provocative.

If you're a prurient minor looking for the dirty parts, go straight to Chapter 10, for the low-down on a bill (The Communications Decency Act) that almost succeeded in making the internet one of the most boring mediums for adults and children alike. There's also some neat stuff about the seven dirty words that can be published here but can't be said on radio or TV.

-- Liz W.