Each constraint imposes a different kind of cost on the dot for engaging in the relevant behavior—in this case, smoking. The cost from norms is different from the market cost, which is different from the cost from law and the cost from the (cancerous) architecture of cigarettes.
The constraints are distinct, yet they are plainly interdependent. Each can support or oppose the others. Technologies can undermine norms and laws; they can also support them. Some constraints make others possible; others make some impossible. Constraints work together, though they function differently and the effect of each is distinct.Norms constrain through the stigma that a community imposes; markets constrain through the price that they exact; architectures constrain through the physical burdens they impose; and law constrains through the punishment it threatens.
We can call each constraint a “regulator,” and we can think of each as a distinct modality of regulation. Each modality has a complex nature, and the interaction among these four is also hard to describe. I’ve worked through this complexity more completely in the appendix. But for now, it is enough to see that they are linked and that, in a sense, they combine to produce the regulation to which our pathetic dot is subject in any given area.
We can use the same model to describe the regulation of behavior in cyberspace.
Law regulates behavior in cyberspace. Copyright law, defamation law, and obscenity laws all continue to threaten ex post sanction for the violation of legal rights.How well law regulates, or how efficiently, is a different question: In some cases it does somore efficiently, in some cases less. But whether better or not, law continues to threaten a certain consequence if it is defied. Legislatures enact;10 prosecutors threaten;11 courts convict.
Norms also regulate behavior in cyberspace. Talk about Democratic politics in the alt.knitting newsgroup, and you open yourself to flaming; “spoof” someone’s identity in aMUD, and you may find yourself “toaded”;13 talk too much in a discussion list, and you are likely to be placed on a common bozo filter. In each case, a set of understandings constrain behavior, again through the threat of ex post sanctions imposed by a community.
Markets regulate behavior in cyberspace. Pricing structures constrain access, and if they do not, busy signals do. (AOL learned this quite dramatically when it shifted froman hourly to a flat-rate pricing plan.)15 Areas of the Web are beginning to charge for access, as online services have for some time. Advertisers reward popular sites; online services drop low-population forums. These behaviors are all a function of market constraints andmarket opportunity. They are all, in this sense, regulations of the market.
Finally, an analog for architecture regulates behavior in cyberspace—code. The software and hardware thatmake cyberspace what it is constitute a set of constraints on how you can behave. The substance of these constraints may vary, but they are experienced as conditions on your access to cyberspace. In some places (online services such as AOL, for instance) you must enter a password before you gain access; in other places you can enter whether identified or not.16 In some places the transactions you engage in produce traces that link the transactions (the “mouse droppings”) back to you; in other places this link is achieved only if you want it to be.17 In some places you can choose to speak a language that only the recipient can hear (through encryption); 18 in other places encryption is not an option.19 The code or software or architecture or protocols set these features, which are selected by code writers. They constrain some behavior by making other behavior possible or impossible. The code embeds certain values or makes certain values impossible. In this sense, it too is regulation, just as the architectures of real-space codes are regulations.
As in real space, then, these fourmodalities regulate cyberspace.
Excerpt from Lawrence Lessig's Code Version 2.0