Code is Law, But Law is Increasingly Determining the Ethics of Code: A Comment

Authors

Jonathon Penney, Dalhousie University Schulich School of Law

Document Type

Book Chapter

Publication Date

2014

Keywords

Code Is Law, Computer Code, Internet Age, CFAA, DMCA, Ethics, Data Science, Research

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.

Comments

Full publication available at https://dash.harvard.edu/handle/1/13632937

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 International License.

Recommended Citation

Jonathon Penney, "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 (Boston: Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society, Harvard University, 2014) 90.