The Laws of Cyberspace - Lawrence Lessig
The Laws of Cyberspace
Lawrence Lessig † Draft 3
©Lessig 1998: This essay was presented at the Taiwan Net ’98 conference, in Taipei, March, 1998.
† Jack N. and Lillian R. Berkman Professor for Entrepreneurial Legal Stud-
ies, Harvard Law School. Thanks to Tim Wu for extremely helpful comments on an earlier draft.
Lessig: The Laws of Cyberspace
Draft: April 3, 1998
Before the revolution, the Tsar in Russia had a system of internal passports. The people hated this system. These passports marked the estate from which you came, and this marking determined the places you could go, with whom you could associate, what you could be. The passports were badges that granted access, or barred access. They controlled what in the Russian state Russians could come to know. The Bolsheviks promised to change all this. They promised to abolish the internal passports. And soon upon their rise to power, they did just that. Russians were again free to travel where they wished. Where they could go was not determined by some document that they were required to carry with them. The abolition of the internal passport symbolized freedom for the Russian people — a democratization of citizenship in Russia. This freedom, however, was not to last. A decade and a half later, faced with the prospect of starving peasants flooding the cities looking for food, Stalin brought back the system of internal passports. Peasants were again tied to their rural land (a restriction that remained throughout the 1970s). Russians were once again restricted by what their passport permitted. Once again, to gain access to Russia, Russians had to show something about who they were. *** Behavior in the real world — this world, the world in which I am now speaking — is regulated by four sorts of constraints. Law is just one of those four constraints. Law regulates by sanctions imposed ex post — fail to pay your taxes, and you are likely to go to jail; steal my car, and you are also likely to go to
Lawrence Lessig † Draft 3
©Lessig 1998: This essay was presented at the Taiwan Net ’98 conference, in Taipei, March, 1998.
† Jack N. and Lillian R. Berkman Professor for Entrepreneurial Legal Stud-
ies, Harvard Law School. Thanks to Tim Wu for extremely helpful comments on an earlier draft.
Lessig: The Laws of Cyberspace
Draft: April 3, 1998
Before the revolution, the Tsar in Russia had a system of internal passports. The people hated this system. These passports marked the estate from which you came, and this marking determined the places you could go, with whom you could associate, what you could be. The passports were badges that granted access, or barred access. They controlled what in the Russian state Russians could come to know. The Bolsheviks promised to change all this. They promised to abolish the internal passports. And soon upon their rise to power, they did just that. Russians were again free to travel where they wished. Where they could go was not determined by some document that they were required to carry with them. The abolition of the internal passport symbolized freedom for the Russian people — a democratization of citizenship in Russia. This freedom, however, was not to last. A decade and a half later, faced with the prospect of starving peasants flooding the cities looking for food, Stalin brought back the system of internal passports. Peasants were again tied to their rural land (a restriction that remained throughout the 1970s). Russians were once again restricted by what their passport permitted. Once again, to gain access to Russia, Russians had to show something about who they were. *** Behavior in the real world — this world, the world in which I am now speaking — is regulated by four sorts of constraints. Law is just one of those four constraints. Law regulates by sanctions imposed ex post — fail to pay your taxes, and you are likely to go to jail; steal my car, and you are also likely to go to