17: Code and the Puzzles of Cyberspace

Table of contents

1. Lessig Chapter 1
2. Lessig Chapter 2: Four Puzzles From Cyberspace
   1. Example 1: MMOG
   2. Example 2: Gambling across state lines
   3. Example 3: Jake, the author on USENET
   4. Example 4: Worms that sniff
3. Four themes
4. Making Sense of Value in Cyberspace

Lessig Chapter 1

Lessig Chapter 2: Four Puzzles From Cyberspace

Chapter 2 is a great start to our reading because Lessig provides no answers, but instead tries to introduce puzzles.

These are puzzles that emerge through the combination of familiar human activities channeled through a new communications medium. The new medium does not leave the action unaffected. It changes the action and its consequences, and it creates new problems.

This is puzzling because on the one hand the action is familiar. But on the other hand the consequences and effects of that action are unfamiliar.

This creates further questions about what to do. Do we need to accept the new consequences even if they feel unpleasant or outrageous? Or do we need to modify and restrict behavior, even though this same behavior once seemed fine and innocent? How can we control or restrict behavior in these new spaces that don’t always seem to allow or respond to tradition mechanisms of control (traditional forms of incentive and disincentive)?

So as an opening reflection, in each of these examples I want to look for the following three structures: 1) common human action, 2) new medium, 3) uncommon consequences.

Example 1: MMOG

Example 2: Gambling across state lines

Example 3: Jake, the author on USENET

Example 4: Worms that sniff

Four themes

Next Lessig ties his example of MMOG to the the theme of “regulation by code”.

Next Lessig ties his example of “Worms that sniff” to a “Latent Ambiguity”.

While we’ve talk about “Latent Ambiguities” before, consider again what Lessig means by a “Latent Ambiguity”.

Finally, Lessig points to the theme of “competing sovereigns”.

Making Sense of Value in Cyberspace

Here let my provide a few of my own reflections as I read chapter 2.

One part of cyberspace which Lessig describes that always, at first glance, strikes me as strange is the fact that people spend real american dollars to build virtual “homes”, “buildings”, “cities”, and “poisonous flowers”. In short they spend real money and real time to build virtual “property” in “virtual space”. Why?

To many, this might seem like the concern of fringe groups, not relevant to the majority of people. But I think with a little reflection we can begin to understand its relevance.

We might begin by thinking of “space” as a metaphor for “access” and “owned space” as the “power to control access”.

In this sense Facebook is a “space” because here you have “access” to others.

This is not the only way to access your friend (i.e. it is not the only space in which to meet your friend). You could meet them in park, call them on the phone, or set up your own website in which you communicate via a page post.

But the Facebook “space” lowers the barriers to enter this space and simultaneously speeds up the immediacy and scale of this access. Not very many spaces, physical or virtual, are able to offer this combination of ease/low cost on the one hand and speed and scale of access on the other hand.

Setting up your own web site takes time, energy, and money. And setting up a simple website will not give you the same kind of speed and scale of access to your friends’ responses and reactions.

Because Facebook “owns” this “space”, they also control access. “Owning” really means here the ability to exclude and include. And such a “space”, whether real or virtual, becomes valuable when there is demand to be in that space and someone has the power to control the supply of that demand.

Leaving Facebook aside, I try to understand the time and money people spend in MMOGs and other virtual worlds like SecondLife along these same lines.

Why would anyone spend money to build a virtual house within SecondLife? Well, it helps to think of the “house” as actually just a “space” for communication, similar to a bulletin board. Within the SecondLife community, owning a house meanings owning who can enter, which really means having control over who can post a message and who can read a message.

If the conversation happening inside this house (aka on this bulletin board) is really useful or exciting, then people will want access to it. This “space” has become valuable. A person who owns this “house” really owns “control” of who can be a part of the conversation. They can begin to make money by charging people for access to the conversation (that is, “to enter the house”).

Keeping this in mind we can see where other forms of “indirect value” emerge.

People who are interesting or funny will draw others to a space, so they become valuable. In order to keep my “house” a desirable place for conversation I might pay certain people to speak exclusively within the confines of the space I control.

Games, activities, “attractions” might also draw people to my space, which means people would then be having their conversations within my space. So as the owner of a “virtual house”, I might pay for a “block of code” that can be used as a game within my space. Some people will come to play the game and others will come to watch the auxiliary conversation.

The example in the reading about “poisonous leaves” at first seems extremely strange. Why would someone pay real dollars for a virtual plant with virtual poisonous leaves?

But imagine that an owner of virtual space is purposely restricting his “house” to experienced players. Veteran players are tired of talking to “newbies”. They want to talk to each other. So the owner of this house has created a space for long-time players who have shown they can survive within the game. “Survival” here generally translates to players with a certain personality type, experience level, and a desirable set of interests.

The owner of this “virtual house” would not want to weed people out by the price of admission because they are not looking for a house full of rich people. They want a house full of experts. Thus the owner needs another mechanism to weed out the uninitiated and retain the unique type of exclusivity they are trying to cultivate. In such a case, the owner of a house like this might be willing to pay real dollars for a piece of code that acts like a “poisonous leaf”. The owner would place the leaves in front of the house. Only veterans and experts would know to avoid them, but the unexperienced would be killed and prevented from entering.

This imaginative “virtual” world is fun, playful, and fanciful, but the market dynamics are just as real as any other “Members Only Club” or “University Club” which uses various forms of subtle “tests” to get the “right sort of people” inside and keep the “wrong sort of people” outside.

We also know that the ability of society to regulate these “spaces of access”, whether physical or virtual, is important to considerations of justice and equality. “Members Only Clubs” and “University Clubs” are places where networking happens and relationships are formed that lead to social power.

When, in the past black people, were excluded from membership based on the color of their skin, this was a real injustice. It had real effects on their ability to be “in the know”, to meet other people in power, and rise to positions of power. Similarly, women excluded from “Men Only” clubs have long complained that this is an injustice that prevents women from rising to the top of corporate ladders.

Because of these recognized injustices, our society felt comfortable introducing regulation. The Civil Rights Act, for example, introduced regulation to put limits and controls on how owners of spaces could wield their power over who could and could not enter a space.

In these opening chapters, I take it that part of Lessig’s larger point is that, underneath the strangeness of cyberspace communities, these issues of power and justice, access and control, remain ever present. And thus the ownership of virtual space is in as much need of regulation as real spaces are.

The issue is further pressing because virtual spaces are becoming all the more prevalent and mainstream. We may not always be inside a fanciful or imaginative game, but we are increasingly conducting our lives inside virtual spaces. Consider our increasing dependence on platforms like Zoom. Then consider the fact that Zoom, Facebook, and YouTube have the power to delete content or prevent the use of its product when it does not like the content. See https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/janelytvynenko/zoom-deleted-events-censorship and again at NYU https://academeblog.org/2020/10/23/statement-from-the-nyu-aaup-on-zoom-censorship-today/

While the issues of power and justice, access and control, remain ever present, what has changed is the logic of these “spaces” which in turn effects how they may be regulated. The example of the governor of “Boreal” attempting, but failing, to control gambling seems intended to illustrate this. The normal routes of regulating behavior may not always work in these new spaces.

One temptation is to conclude that cyberspace cannot be regulated.

But Lessig further points out (and this perhaps is his overarching message) is that regulation is already happening and will continue happen. The fact that a MMOG environment has been coded to allow users to create “poisonous plants” is already a kind of regulation (e.g. designing the logic of the universe to permit exclusion based on certain kinds tests).

The question then is not should cyberspace be regulated or can cyberspace be regulated? The question rather is “who” will regulate it? Will the “public” have a voice in its construction? Or will it be built solely by the whims of those who code it or the commercial interests that finance it.

Consider again the Zoom case linked to above. If Zoom feels that certain content will be a liability for them, it is in their financial interest to shut down their space. This economic pressure is a kind of regulation. But the effectiveness of the regulation reveals certain kind of values: the value of minimizing financial risk. But this value comes at the cost of other public goods, such as open discussion and access to multiple view points. Lessig asks: are we prepared to cede these regulating decisions to the corporations that finance the information systems we use, or is it important that the public interest also has a voice in how access to “space” gets controlled.

Finally, this brings us back to a question we’ve indirectly raised before. How much do we, as “non-coders”, need to know about the architecture of the cyberspace? If we neglect to understand the mechanics of this medium – a medium that is quickly becoming the sole means of our access to information – will we, the public, be capable of having an influence on the system that determines who does and does not get to enter the “house”?