Regulation by Architecture

Erasei writes: "With all of the goverments around the world trying harder and harder to regulate what their citizens do on the net, this article has some interesting ideas. While the text was written in 1998, points like the one made here are still interesting: The extent to which the surveillance capacity of cyberspace is limited, and where permitted made controllable by user choice, is perhaps the single key issue in the regulation of cyberspace." This is a very insightful article, despite its age (I'd read it before, but it bears repeating). This article, and Lessig's work generally, puts the lie to the myth that the internet cannot be regulated. Coincidentally, there's an article on this same subject in the NYTimes today. Discusses how the structure of online sites affects the discussion that occurs there. Good reading.

Comments

expert in action

[e_lehman]

From the New York Times article:

On other sites, a group of regular users rank the value of contributions, and the rankings then determines their place on the "bulletin board." How well that works, however, is an open question. When Mr. Sunstein tried to intervene in a discussion of his own book on a techie Web site called slashdot.org, his contribution was given a very low ranking. "I think maybe they didn't believe I was the author of the book," he said.

I looked up this posting. His post number was something like 171/178. Funny that the guy wrote a book about this kinda stuff, but doesn't have the first clue about getting modded up: POST EARLY!!!