March 25, 2008
Spam and laws
When I asked Larry Lessig why geeks don't think of the law as a possible solution to their challenges, he told an interesting story:
He says he first realized the depth of the tech/politics disconnect after attending some of the first anti-spam conferences. At the conferences, geek after geek rose to discuss how to get another 5% improvement in filtering here, 3% incremental improvement in blocking there, or 5% by doing X or 10% by doing Y—but universally they were interested in software solutions, either new code or new protocols or new firewalls or the like. No one suggested getting government involved. Lessig suggested that new government regulation or enforcement could make a significant difference—maybe as much as 20% or 30% with game-changing legislation—and the reaction he was met with, he recalled, was that "it was so irrational to think about the law as a solution."
Technologists, he explains, lives in an idyllic environment: they get to spend their days developing and solving problems in logical, straightforward ways that are governed by strict rules and protocols. Code makes sense. Coding makes sense. The whole series of interlocking protocols online, from CSS to TCP/IP to FTP and HTPP, all ensure smooth operation in exchange for strict adherence to the rules.
By contrast, "Washington politics is torture," Lessig said. The process doesn't make sense; it can be changed at any time by rules that someone else makes up; "super users" (lobbyists, senior staff, bureaucrats, and committee chairmen) can hijack anything at any time; and, to top it all off, it's incredibly slow—most legislation or regulation takes five years or longer to work its way through Congress or a goverment agency—or the equivalent of more than three flips of Moore's Law. Well, yea, when you phrase it that way it doesn't sound very fun either.
I wonder whether we have made law too complicated? I'm reminded of a conversation I had a few weeks ago with Charles Overby, the head of the new Newseum. We were discussing the First Amendment, which reaches five protections into 45 words, and is carved in marble 74 feet high on the front of the Newseum. He laughed and said Congress today couldn't get even a single one of those five rights into 45 words. I couldn't agree more—I can envision a law passed today guaranteeing freedom of speech running to several hundred pages at least. And don't even try to guess how long the the 27-word Second Amendment would be if written today....
