Page:Code And Other Laws of Cyberspace Version 2 0.pdf/7



This is a translation of an old book—indeed, in Internet time, it is a translation of an ancient text. The first edition of this book was published in 1999. It was written in a very different context, and, in many ways, it was written in opposition to that context. As I describe in the first chapter, the dominant idea among those who raved about cyberspace then was that cyberspace was beyond the reach of real-space regulation. Governments couldn't touch life online. And hence, life online would be different, and separate, from the dynamic of life offline. Code v1 was an argument against that then common view.

In the years since, that common view has faded. The confidence of the Internet exceptionalists has waned. The idea—and even the desire—that the Internet would remain unregulated is gone. And thus, in accepting the invitation to update this book, I faced a difficult choice: whether to write a new book, or to update the old, to make it relevant and readable in a radically different time.

I've done the latter. The basic structure of the first edition remains, and the argument advanced is the same. But I've changed the framing of particular examples, and, I hope, the clarity of the writing. I've also extended the argument in some parts, and added brief links to later work in order to better integrate the argument of the original book.

One thing I have not done, however, is extend the argument of this book in the places that others have worked. Nor have I succumbed to the (insanely powerful) temptation to rewrite the book in response to critics, both sympathetic and not. I have included direction in the notes for those wanting to follow the arguments others have made in response. But, even more than when it was first published, this book is just a small part of a much bigger debate. Thus, you shouldn't read this to the exclusion of extraordinary later work. Two books in particular already published nicely complement the argument made here—Goldsmith and Wu's Who Controls the Net (2006), and Benkler's The Wealth of Networks (2006)—and a third by Zittrain, expected in 2007, significantly extends the same argument.