Cyber Rights: Defending Free Speech in the Digital Age (Mit Press) - Softcover

Godwin, Mike

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0262571684 ISBN 13: 9780262571685

Publisher: MIT Press, 2003

Synopsis

A first-person account of the fight to preserve First Amendment rights in the digital age.

Lawyer and writer Mike Godwin has been at the forefront of the struggle to preserve freedom of speech on the Internet. In Cyber Rights he recounts the major cases and issues in which he was involved and offers his views on free speech and other constitutional rights in the digital age. Godwin shows how the law and the Constitution apply, or should apply, in cyberspace and defends the Net against those who would damage it for their own purposes. Godwin details events and phenomena that have shaped our understanding of rights in cyberspace―including early antihacker fears that colored law enforcement activities in the early 1990s, the struggle between the Church of Scientology and its critics on the Net, disputes about protecting copyrighted works on the Net, and what he calls "the great cyberporn panic." That panic, he shows, laid bare the plans of those hoping to use our children in an effort to impose a new censorship regime on what otherwise could be the most liberating communications medium the world has seen. Most important, Godwin shows how anyone―not just lawyers, journalists, policy makers, and the rich and well connected―can use the Net to hold media and political institutions accountable and to ensure that the truth is known.

About this title

Review:

Cyber Rights is an exceptionally rational and compelling account of the most explosive and controversial issues surrounding freedom in cyberspace. Author Mike Godwin is the well-known outspoken activist for online civil liberties and counsel to the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF). He's been directly involved in many of the news-making cases and offers cogent analysis of very thorny situations, such as:

• Time magazine's infamous "Cyberporn" issue, which featured a flawed study and which many believe was at least a partial cause for passage of the Communications Decency Act of 1996 (later overturned);
• the case of Jake Baker, a college kid who distributed his stories about rape and torture in newsgroups, which resulted in his computer being confiscated by police;
• the Church of Scientology's line in the sand regarding intellectual property and the backlash against Scientology in online debates;
• the libel conflicts experienced by Net journalists Matt Drudge and Brock Meeks; and
• Philip Zimmerman's (the programmer who developed the encryption tool Pretty Good Privacy [PGP]) fight with the Clinton administration to allow the use of encryption software.

Godwin is a natural teacher, carefully describing each event and explaining the issues surrounding it. Unlike many writers, he shows that he thoroughly understands the arguments for restricting speech. He then methodically takes the arguments apart, covering what is normally boring legal theory and explaining it in a lively manner so that readers are drawn into the story.

This book differs from other books on the topic in two ways: it's entertaining and it's a personal account. It's obvious that Godwin enjoys telling his stories, and he passes his enthusiasm on to readers. Readers also get a sense of Godwin's personal involvement as he describes his role in exposing the erroneous study that was the basis of Time magazine's "cyberporn" scare. In his chapter on the court decision that overturned the Communications Decency Act of 1996, it's clear that Godwin's work for the EFF is not just his job, but his passion. --Elizabeth Lewis

About the Author:

Mike Godwin is a Policy Fellow at the Center for Democracy and Technology, in Washington, D.C., and a columnist for American Lawyer magazine.

About this edition

• Publisher: MIT Press
• Publication date: 2003
• ISBN 10: 0262571684
• ISBN 13: 9780262571685
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 426