Book Review: Regulating Code: Good Governance and Better Regulation in the Information Age

Mira Burri
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Abstract

Digital technologies have profoundly changed not only the ways we create, distribute, access, use and re-use information but also many of the governance structures we had in place. Overall, "older" institutions at all governance levels have grappled and often failed to master the multi-faceted and multi-directional issues of the Internet. Regulatory entrepreneurs have yet to discover and fully mobilize the potential of digital technologies as an influential factor impacting upon the regulability of the environment and as a potential regulatory tool in themselves. At the same time, we have seen a deterioration of some public spaces and lower prioritization of public objectives, when strong private commercial interests are at play, such as most tellingly in the field of copyright. Less tangibly, private ordering has taken hold and captured through contracts spaces, previously regulated by public law. Code embedded in technology often replaces law. Non-state action has in general proliferated and put serious pressure upon conventional state-centered, command-and-control models.Under the conditions of this "messy" governance, the provision of key public goods, such as freedom of information, has been made difficult or is indeed jeopardized.The grand question is how can we navigate this complex multi-actor, multi-issue space and secure the attainment of fundamental public interest objectives. This is also the question that Ian Brown and Chris Marsden seek to answer with their book, Regulating Code, as recently published under the "Information Revolution and Global Politics" series of MIT Press.This book review critically assesses the bold effort by Brown and Marsden.
书评:《规范代码:信息时代的良好治理和更好的监管》
数字技术不仅深刻地改变了我们创造、分发、访问、使用和重用信息的方式,也改变了我们现有的许多治理结构。总体而言,各级政府的“老”机构都在努力应对互联网的多面性和多方位问题,但往往未能掌握这些问题。监管企业家尚未发现并充分调动数字技术的潜力,将其作为影响环境可监管性的一个影响因素,并将其本身作为一种潜在的监管工具。与此同时,当强大的私人商业利益在发挥作用时,我们看到一些公共空间的恶化和公共目标的优先级降低,比如在版权领域。不那么明显的是,私人订单已经通过合同空间占据了一席之地,而这些空间以前是由公法监管的。嵌入技术的代码常常取代法律。非国家行动总体上激增,并对传统的以国家为中心的指挥控制模式造成了严重压力。在这种“混乱”的治理条件下,信息自由等关键公共产品的提供变得困难,甚至受到了损害。大问题是我们如何驾驭这个复杂的多主体、多议题的空间,确保实现基本的公共利益目标。这也是伊恩•布朗(Ian Brown)和克里斯•马斯登(Chris Marsden)在他们的著作《规范代码》(Regulating Code)中试图回答的问题,该书最近在麻省理工学院出版社(MIT Press)的“信息革命与全球政治”系列中出版。这篇书评批判性地评价了布朗和马斯登的大胆努力。
本文章由计算机程序翻译,如有差异,请以英文原文为准。
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