The Fourth Quadrant

"In the late 1990s, Larry Lessig suggested a way to systematize the study of cyberlaw. He started with a blank PowerPoint slide and placed a red dot at its center. The dot represented you: an individual buffeted by extrinsic forces. The forces take up the rest of the slide, each pushing the dot one way or another. They are laws, norms, code, and market. Lessig's insight was that these forces are each a form of control, and thus a form of law. To study cyberlaw by studying only that which is formally labeled law-that which emanates from sovereigns-was to miss the influences exerted through other means and by other parties. Moreover, since the government can create laws to influence norms, markets, and code, there are many paths for regulators to push around the poor embattled individual, more subtle and perhaps more difficult to resist than direct regulation."