Digital Culture and Governance

Ø A Brief Internet Timeline

s Vannevar Bush's "Memex" (1945) – see link from Charles Mann article (“As We May Think”)

s Arpanet (DoD, 1969)

s Bitnet ("Because It’s Time NETwork," NYU-Yale, 1981)

s Internet (Arpanet & Milnet split, 1983)

s Whole Earth ‘Lectronic Link (WELL, 1985)

s World Wide Web (WWW) released by Tim Berners-Lee (1991)

Ø Intellectual Property

s Types of protection:

- Copyright

- Patents

- Trademarks

s U.S. Constitution: from Article 8:

"The Congress shall have the power . . . to promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries."

s Digital Millennium Copyright Act (1998)

Makes it a crime to circumvent anti-piracy measures built into most commercial software.

Outlaws the manufacture, sale, or distribution of code-cracking devices used to illegally copy software.

Ø Lawrence Lessig: Code: And Other Laws of Cyberspace (1999)

What is “code”?

s Public policy

- Law

- Regulation

- Inter-governmental agreements

s Private and/or secret policy

- Corporate policies

- Inter-corporate agreements (trusts)

s Some problems with private control of code

- Mobile, unaccountable power:

- Problematic assumption: Cyberspace is "unregulable"?)

John Perry Barlow, “The Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace”:

Governments of the Industrial World, you weary giants of flesh and steel, I come from Cyberspace, the new home of Mind. On behalf of the future, I ask you of the past to leave us alone. You are not welcome among us. You have no sovereignty where we gather. John Perry Barlow, "The Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace"

Lessig: Is there a “nature” to cyberspace? What kind of nature is it? Can it and should it be changed?