great architecture is great politics

Posted on June 18, 2003 by Lessig

Lawrence Solum and Minn Chung have a comprehensive and powerful view of layers in network architecture, nicely linking that architecture to policy implications, in particular, how governments regulate.

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2 Responses to great architecture is great politics

  1. Alison Greenwald says:
    June 18, 2003 at 1:46 pm

    This is an interesting way to analyze the problem and parts are very good, but it downplays the fact that the goal of the regulations in all of the foreign cases was to eliminate all access to certain types of content, therefore false positives were not a concern. Regulating at a lower layer than the intended reach will certainly block a lot of desired content, but can be somewhat more effective at ensuring that all undesired content is effectively blocked.

    In the US with our 1st Amendment, narrowly tailored restrictions are clearly necessary, but in China and Serbia and even France, the constitutional freedoms are far different than ours, and they need not narrowly tailor their speech restrictions.

    The paper fails to propose any way in which this goal (100% blockage of certain types of content) can be effectively accomplished without violating the layer principle. I certainly hope our politicians, regulators, and judges pay attention to layers, but absent a principle like our 1st Amendment, I don’t see any reason why foreign governments would do so.

  2. tom says:
    November 27, 2003 at 6:33 am

    hope that the “buildings” do not crash ….

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