Architects: The Lawmakers and Codebreakers

Who controls cyberspace?  Although cyberspace is encompassed with government regulations such as copyright infringement laws, it is up to the individuals who create the compounds of cyberspace to enforce government regulations within cyberspace.  Thus, government has limited control within cyberspace.  As Lessig puts it, it is the architects of cyberspace that create the “code” or law of cyberspace. To further explore this idea, it is the “analog for architecture which regulates behavior in cyberspace.”  He says that the “software and hardware that make cyberspace is what constitutes a set of constraints on how you can behave.”  Those who create the software and hardware are the code makers working for big businesses such as AOL, Angelfire, Google, Yahoo!, Microsoft, Apple and a galaxy of private hosted websites.  Though, for the most part, it is the architects that work for domains like Google that create the laws of cyberspace and without public domains, cyberspace and Internet would be worthless to those that are not the code makers.  These large corporations host hired humans as the programmers that compile software for cyberspace which for serve as the new foundation of our economy.  As capital being the driving force behind competition among corporations, which in turn provides jobs, the current inclusion of hyper-mobility of capital was produced following powerful global networking cyberspace provides.  In essence, cyberspace is the link necessary for the mobility of capital, capital being labor, commodities, etc.; which create work.  In a broad sense, the cyberspace that is programmed or controlled by the coders of big businesses has the ability to influence the entire global working force.  Because these coder’s create the laws of cyberspace, the only thing stopping them from corruption and bringing down the structure of cyberspace and the global market is the two forms of regulation Lessig describes, direct and indirect.  If the laws of government have only limited regulation within cyberspace, they can constrain the choices of the code makers by the direct regulation of punishment. An indirect constraint to the code makers’ power is the very idea of large businesses providing jobs for programmers. It is not just one single company that creates cyberspace, but rather a multitude of programmers working under companies like Microsoft and Google that collaborate their efforts to create cyberspace.  In this indirect form of regulation it isn’t the government placing the constraint; it is the central idea of capitalism.  Competition among large businesses creates jobs for programmers and therefore displacing the power of the architects.