Regulating Code Good Governance and Better Regulation in the Information Age

Internet use has become ubiquitous in the past two decades, but governments,legislators, and their regulatory agencies have struggled to keep up with the rapidly changingInternet technologies and uses. In this groundbreaking collaboration, regulatory lawyer ChristopherMarsden and computer scientist Ian Brown analyze the regulatory shaping of "code" -- thetechnological environment of the Internet -- to achieve more economically efficient and sociallyjust regulation. They examine five "hard cases" that illustrate the regulatory crisis:privacy and data protection; copyright and creativity incentives; censorship; social networks anduser-generated content; and net neutrality. The authors describe the increasing"multistakeholderization" of Internet governance, in which user groups argue forrepresentation in the closed business-government dialogue, seeking to bring in both rights-based andtechnologically expert perspectives. Brown and Marsden draw out lessons for better future regulationfrom the regulatory and interoperability failures illustrated by the five cases. They conclude thatgovernments, users, and better functioning markets need a smarter "prosumer law" approach.Prosumer law would be designed to enhance the competitive production of public goods, includinginnovation, public safety, and fundamental democratic rights.

Ian Brown is Professor of Information Security and Privacy at Oxford University's Oxford Internet Institute. He is the editor of the Research Handbook on Governance of the Internet.

Christopher T. Marsden is Professor of Law at the University of Sussex school of Law. He is the author of Net Neutrality: Towards a Co-Regulatory Solution, Internet Co-Regulation, and three other books.