Code is Law, But Law is Increasingly Determining the Ethics of Code: A Comment
in Urs Gasser, Jonathan Zittrain, Robert Faris & Rebekah H. Jones (eds.), Internet Monitor 2014: Reflections on the Digital World: Platforms, Policy, Privacy, and Public Discourse, Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society, Harvard University 90 (2014)
3 Pages Posted: 21 Nov 2016
Date Written: November 1, 2014
Abstract
“Code is Law”, the aphorism Larry Lessig popularized, spoke to the importance of computer code as a central regulating force in the Internet age. That remains true, but today, overreaching laws are also increasingly subjugating important social and ethics questions raised by code to the domain of law. Those laws — like the CFAA and DMCA — need to be curtailed or their zealous enforcement reigned; they deter not only legitimate research but also important related social and ethics questions. But researchers must act too: to re-assert control over the social, legal, and ethical direction of their fields. Otherwise, law will increasingly determine the direction of data science and the ethics of code.
Keywords: code is law, ethics, research ethics, DMCA, CFAA, disclosure
JEL Classification: K40, P37
Suggested Citation: Suggested Citation