For a copy of the book you can go to: http://codev2.cc/

You can download a .pdf version of it from this link provided on the site: http://pdf.codev2.cc/Lessig-Code v2.pdf

You can also read a copy online on this site: http://www.socialtext.net/codev2 /index.cgi

Okay, I haven't read over the blog so correct me if someone has already mentioned this. For one, does the beginning of this book seem like a contradiction piece to Orwell? Basically the vast possibilities that are derived from the freedom of being able to access cyberspace with unlimited means and no regulations seems like the lack of goverment that Orwell was describing in 1984.

Also, I am not positive if I read this somewhere or if it was discussed in my Cowell Core Imagining Justice Course, but the intent of a democracy is to provide what individuals consider in a sense "Freedom" by taking away fundamental freedoms of every individual to benefit society as a whole. For example, to elaborate on this concept, to be completely "free" one is able to kill another man that he does not like. However, by allowing an individual the freedom to kill another man, the freedoms of the man being killed are being unjustly removed. Hence, freedom is freedom as long as it does not remove the freedom from someone else. All in all, the government regulates your freedom to kill, as it deems beneficial for the society as a whole to do so.

See also Do We Make the Hand Invisible by Looking the Other Way?

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I stopped reading at chapter two when he accused Grand Theft Auto of being an MMOG that caused violence and prostitution.

Sorry; To some degree I respect people who call out violent games on being bad, but when you cant be bothered to check whether or not your so called "MMO" even offers online play, you lose any credibility you had. I'm hoping I'm not the only one who felt that he effectivly degenerated into a rant by the end of chapter two. It was good up till that point though.

Beyond that he seems to be very fond of not only using sweeping generalizations, but data that is, to put it simply, wrong. According to this, there were 9 million people playing MMOGs in 1999. This is false. If he's only looking at actual MMO's, the number is too large. If he is looking at everything (IE Grand Theft Auto) the number if FAR too small.

Despite his claims that he is "not [trying] to draw lines between the acceptable virtual dual-lives and the unacceptable" (20), he clearly is. And, he has a right to do so; But only if he were to offer data that is remotely correct.

I am not very familiar with either the first or the second edition of the text, but he does say in the foreward to the second edition that he left many "mistakes" in the text for historical context (could this be one of these? [I am more/less totally oblivious to the gaming scene]).

I find many of his statements provocative, and it is this "thought provoking" that I find most "valuable" (of those scattered bits & pieces I have read so far).

:) nmw

He may have left the mistakes in to provide historical context, but that doesnt make the information correct. All it does is show that he did a slap-dash job researching the first time through and didn't fix any mistakes the second time.

If it were some fine detail of game play, I might feel more sympathetic, but... All one needs to do is look at the back of the box to see that there's no online play in grand theft auto.

Historical context or not, part of being a scholarly writer is doing research; Not simply stating made up facts to make your point.

Like I said, I do not know much about the gaming scene, and do not know how central that is to any point he is making (I may not have read that part of the text yet, so please forgive my "innocence" ;)

I also found the reading somewhat thought-provoking although I can't see my life online dramatically altered in any way. I use the internet for research and recreation, I figure if there's something I want I can get it, either online or in life; it's up to me to choose what I want to view/participate in and ignore/block what I don't. This may sound like a non sequitur, but I believe it could/would lead back to this discussion: has anyone read Ayn Rand's Fountainhead? Do you agree/disagree with the principles described therein?

Well, it certainly was an interesting read, and it made me think about aspects of the way the "system" works (through the ominous "code" and various ways that law affects markets and societal norms which affects architecture) in a way that I haven't thought of before, but like a few other people said before, it doesn't really change the way I do things or how I interact with the world. Regulation is necessary to some degree as the good of the whole society depends on it. If we have no system of control balancing everything out we would be left with nothing. I think the author might have looked a bit too far into 1984.

PS: Grand Theft Auto is a single player crime spree!

yeah i have to agree with everyone GTA isnt the reason that everyone does anythign bad. it just seems like a scapegoat to me. it seems like almost every single shooting or something in that nature are blamed on violent videogames. if thsi is true then why dont all the soldiers in Iraq play grand theft auto? then they would be the best killing machines on this planet according to that logic.

Let me offer some rather extreme examples (of what I think Mr. Lessig is getting at).

I think that people are focusing too much on the video game example. The point of the reading and I think of the entire book is that there is a way to control what is going on in cyberspace. He is trying to discuss how controlled cyberspace should be and who should be in control. I found the reading to be very interesting.

this reading was not my favorite of all the readings. i found the wording a lot harder and the chapters were generally more tedious. most of it was stuff we already knew about supply and demand just worded in a way that was more advanced. for example the fact that market, law, architure, and norms all effect an individual and vice versa. obvioulsy norms effect the individual, but doesn't an individual effect the norms as well? and clearly the market effects the individual but doesn't the individual effect the way the markets advertise to the consumer? i guess the tobacco analysis was somewhat interesting but in general i felt bored during the reading.

are you referring to george orwell?? because i didn't make that connection at all..

Tim Obert said:

Okay, I haven't read over the blog so correct me if someone has already mentioned this. For one, does the beginning of this book seem like a contradiction piece to Orwell? Basically the vast possibilities that are derived from the freedom of being able to access cyberspace with unlimited means and no regulations seems like the lack of goverment that Orwell was describing in 1984.

well that is just like our constitution: every was has the liberty of persuit of happiness but not if your happiness infringes on another person's happiness. if shooting your friend in the face makes you happy that infringes on your friends liberty to life. and they look at what weighs heavier, clearly the liberty to life is more important than the liberty of happiness.

Tim Obert said:

Also, I am not positive if I read this somewhere or if it was discussed in my Cowell Core Imagining Justice Course, but the intent of a democracy is to provide what individuals consider in a sense "Freedom" by taking away fundamental freedoms of every individual to benefit society as a whole. For example, to elaborate on this concept, to be completely "free" one is able to kill another man that he does not like. However, by allowing an individual the freedom to kill another man, the freedoms of the man being killed are being unjustly removed. Hence, freedom is freedom as long as it does not remove the freedom from someone else. All in all, the government regulates your freedom to kill, as it deems beneficial for the society as a whole to do so.

For anyone who didn't do the reading i will enlighten you on what sam is referring to: Note: the jake like character he refers to is a man who uses the internet to write violent sexual short stories that people in 'real life' don't know about: "As the internet has grown, it has produced many more Times recently reported, thousands of children spend hundreds of hours prostituting themselves online.

he then goes on the explain the psycological baggage such games create. the belief is that the virtual life crosses over into something real. i personally have a different opinoin from sam on this subject. i do believe that these games can probably do harm and that you are promotting violence among children. maybe my opinion is tainted because i don't really play these video games? however, if you become numb to seeing blood and violence and all this bad stuff you are bound to have some sort of tainted view of it. when i watch horrow movies i become terrified because the view of seeing people killed freightens me, however when my cousins who play violent video games see blood and horror films, they react much differently and do not seem to even flinch.

Sam Rosen said:

I stopped reading at chapter two when he accused Grand Theft Auto of being an MMOG that caused violence and prostitution.

Sorry; To some degree I respect people who call out violent games on being bad, but when you cant be bothered to check whether or not your so called "MMO" even offers online play, you lose any credibility you had. I'm hoping I'm not the only one who felt that he effectivly degenerated into a rant by the end of chapter two. It was good up till that point though.

Beyond that he seems to be very fond of not only using sweeping generalizations, but data that is, to put it simply, wrong. According to this, there were 9 million people playing MMOGs in 1999. This is false. If he's only looking at actual MMO's, the number is too large. If he is looking at everything (IE Grand Theft Auto) the number if FAR too small.

Despite his claims that he is "not [trying] to draw lines between the acceptable virtual dual-lives and the unacceptable" (20), he clearly is. And, he has a right to do so; But only if he were to offer data that is remotely correct.

Sam Rosen said:

I stopped reading at chapter two when he accused Grand Theft Auto of being an MMOG that caused violence and prostitution.

I don't think he is accusing GTA of causing any violence or prostitution, but instead pointing out that the norms that regulate our real life doesn't apply to the virtual life. People do certain things in a game that they wouldn't do in the real world. Hence the example of Jake acting in a total different manner while he's in cyberspace.

I liked the reading alot. His point of view on certain issues did seem a little jumbeled to me, but the overall idea was interesting. I think we need to start adressing all these online issues as new problems that we can't necessarily apply old rules to. One thing that the reading made me think of was DRM issues. People always like to label downloading as "stealing", when in fact, both parties are fully aware of the transfer taking place. If we simply label it "stealing" we wont make any progress in fixing the actual problem; we need to adress these issues in a new way.

And yeah, I agree with Jon, the GTA reference was more of just an example to show how different code enforces different ways in which we interact, and how some bring out the worst in people. Was funny he thought it was an MMO tho.

Sam Rosen said:

I stopped reading at chapter two when he accused Grand Theft Auto of being an MMOG that caused violence and prostitution.

Sorry; To some degree I respect people who call out violent games on being bad, but when you cant be bothered to check whether or not your so called "MMO" even offers online play, you lose any credibility you had. I'm hoping I'm not the only one who felt that he effectivly degenerated into a rant by the end of chapter two. It was good up till that point though.

Beyond that he seems to be very fond of not only using sweeping generalizations, but data that is, to put it simply, wrong. According to this, there were 9 million people playing MMOGs in 1999. This is false. If he's only looking at actual MMO's, the number is too large. If he is looking at everything (IE Grand Theft Auto) the number if FAR too small.

Despite his claims that he is "not [trying] to draw lines between the acceptable virtual dual-lives and the unacceptable" (20), he clearly is. And, he has a right to do so; But only if he were to offer data that is remotely correct.

I enjoyed the reading otherwise, but I do agree with what you're saying. As a gamer I have a natural tendency to become defensive when the medium is called out.

What he had to say was more interesting to me personally than our other reading so far simply because I felt I could relate to it better, given my interests.

I think the most powerful regulator in most cases is the government through laws - which is a scary thing. In the example in the book where Jake was arrested and locked up for his lewd stories is a scary situation. It is true that what he was talking about was not a social "norm" but to be punished for speaking his mind without acting on what he wrote about is a scary thing. Also the governments rulings on laws and the punishments on breaking laws is very powerful. It is amazing for me to think about how quickly you can be caught up by breaking laws and how easy it is for you to be incarcerated. I think that laws are more powerful than the market, codes, or norms because they give people a very definite absolute punishment for not obeying the laws that no one wants to find out about. In essense, I am scared of the government and the bajillions of laws that we can break everyday because of the power they have over us and how i have seen that power abused to hurt people who are innocent or close to it.

which government?

(note that the Internet is an international phenomenon)

i liked that the book looked at the political ramificaions of not addressing a quickly growing technology often times people get caught up in the possible benefits of a particular technology without looking of the possible negative impacts it was interesting to examine political theory in a new light (with less of an emphasis on action an more on intention) political theory is something that can be looked at without reference to real space, and probably should be looked at in that light in order to best understand values in a different framework

it was tight reading a little lacking in the progressive department but overall, tight

i loved the reading i found it very interesting.One of the parts of the reading that i liked the most was when they mentioned the two universities i belive it was chicago and Harvard. WHile in chicago the intenenet privilidges were not being enforce in Harvard they became strict. In chicago the internet connection did not require some sort of username the only thing that it did require was a computer and an ethernet connection...and on the other hand at HArvard peoples actions were being track in order to connect to the internet they require a username kind of like we have it here at UCSC. I think that this reading made me think i kind of wonder how this school internet would be if it was the same as Chicago...interesting reading

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