This second edition, or Version 2.0, has been prepared through the author’s wiki, a web site that allows readers to edit the text, making this the first reader-edited revision of a popular book. Since its original publication, this seminal book has earned the status of a minor classic.

Because of the legal power code holds, Lessig cautions against the commercialization of code, which he believes will lead to the privatization of law and increased governmental control. In this realm, code is the most significant form of law, and it is up to lawyers, policymakers, and especially citizens to decide what values that code embodies. Of these, however, Lessig believes the most effective form of regulation online is through architecture, online, code is law (pg 5). These choices are all about architecture: about what kind of code will govern cyberspace, and who will control it. We can-we must-choose what kind of cyberspace we want and what freedoms we will guarantee. Under the influence of commerce, cyberspace is becoming a highly regulable space, where behavior is much more tightly controlled than in real space. That code can create a place of freedom-as the original architecture of the Net did-or a place of oppressive control. It is not in the nature of cyberspace to be unregulable cyberspace has no “nature.” It only has code-the software and hardware that make cyberspace what it is. Code, first published in 2000, argues that this belief is wrong. Abstract: There’s a common belief that cyberspace cannot be regulated-that it is, in its very essence, immune from the government’s (or anyone else’s) control.

Lessig code 2.0