Wednesday, September 20, 2006

[Week3_2] On 'Code' (2/2).

The second half of CODE deals with the real-world cyber issues that we encounter, such as copyright, privacy, free speech and sovereignty. Regulations are being implemented in all those issues via code, and the resistance against it should be also made through opening of the code, in Lessig's view. And being a practical person, he has concrete solutions on hand: (creative) commons, P3P and open access.

However, it is not clear on how he adresses the boundaries of the individual nations and the Internet as an international entity. Law and policies are enforced by each nation, but the net code is regulated in an international standarization process (or, is it really international, with ICANN being a private organization in California?). Also, the root domain name servers are located mostly in the US. And ECHELON, the urban legend that proved to be real, deals with intercepting communication from all over the world. I don't mean to say that the US sets to conquer the world , but that code-counteractions to resist the regulations need to divided into more dimensions. For example smaller online communities, bigger services, nationstate, and international. Only then will the solutions actually work on all levels of the cyberspace life.

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