Are we overprotecting code? Thoughts on first-generation Internet law

Washington and Lee Law Review, Fall 2000 by Kerr, Orin S

This Essay argues that Internet law presently suffers from a tendency to regulate cyberspace based on form rather than function. In areas such as free speech, patent law, and privacy law, judges and legislatures have regulated Internet code based on what it is, rather than what it does. The result has been remarkably broad rules that extend far greater legal protection to code in cyberspace than its equivalents receive in the physical world. The author suggests that greater focus on function can permit more accurate applications of traditional legal doctrines to the Internet.

I. Introduction

The French artist Georges Seurat is famous for his paintings of Parisian street scenes that consist entirely of thousands of small dots.1 If you view a Seurat painting from just a few inches away, every bit of canvas looks the same. No matter where you look, you see only colored dots. As you walk away from the painting, however, objects begin to form. The dots coalesce into distinct images of people, trees, grass, and sky. At a sufficient distance, the dots disappear altogether, and where you once saw dots you see instead a colorful landscape of late nineteenth century Paris.

Like a Seurat painting, the Internet has both a "close-up" version and a very different version at a distance. Close up, the Internet consists of a web of networked computers that process billions of electronic instructions consisting entirely of digital O's and l's. This perspective is like Seurat's dots: No matter where you look, every type of communication and instruction is exactly the same. Everything on the Internet is code, an algorithm, a series of inputs and outputs.2 Step back, however, and the Internet changes. From a distance, the 0's and 1's of the Internet resolve into the distinct and varied contents that define our understanding of the virtual world of cyberspace. The 0's and 1's transform into personal letters, commercial advertisements, hate speech, pornography, political commentary, shopping excursions, free music, malicious computer viruses, and everything else you can find online. Like Seurat's dots, the code fades from view and is replaced by the full picture of life in cyberspace.

In this Essay, I will argue that Internet law presently suffers from a tendency to adopt the close-up view of the Internet, and that this tendency has distorted the application of traditional legal doctrines to computers and the Internet. In contexts ranging from the First Amendment and privacy law to patent law, the law of the Internet has regulated code based on its form, not its function. Like museumgoers eyeing a Seurat painting from inches away, judges and legislators have viewed Internet code and communications as 0's and 's zipping around the world, without much consideration of what the 0's and 1's are there to do. This failure to appreciate code as a backdrop to the virtual world of cyberspace has led courts to embrace an Internet formalism characterized by broad rules that apply equally to all code regardless of its contents. In short, Internet law tends to regulate code based on what the code is, rather than the more nuanced conception of what the code does. Whereas law in the physical world distinguishes carefully between different types of algorithms, communications, and ideas, the law of cyberspace presently treats all code equally.

I will also argue in this Essay that the close-up view of the Internet has had a systematic effect on the nature and scope of Internet law. The adoption of a close-up perspective has led to the overprotection of code - a tendency to conclude that statutory and constitutional protections should apply particularly broadly in cyberspace. Our legal system traditionally affords special protections to certain types of communications and algorithms, protections such as privacy from eavesdropping, First Amendment protections, and protection as intellectual property. Because Internet law tends to treat all code equally regardless of its contents, it has expanded the scope of these protections in cyberspace to include all code. The result has been a dramatic expansion of the scope of legal protection that code receives in cyberspace as compared to the physical world of "realspace." Recent decisions indicate a simple rule: if it's code, the law of cyberspace will protect it. The close-up view of the Internet has made all code look the same, which has led the courts to conclude that all code deserves protection.

I will present my argument using three examples. The first example is the Sixth Circuit's recent First Amendment decision in Junger v. Daley,3 which held that all computer source code is protected speech. My second example comes from patent law, and examines the Federal Circuit's expansion of the scope of patent protection for computerized algorithms in State Street Bank & Trust Co. v. Signature Financial Group.4 The third example studies the law of electronic surveillance and examines how electronic privacy laws extend unusually broad privacy protections to unauthorized users of computer networks. Quite obviously, these three areas of law are very different. In each case, however, I will argue that the law has overprotected code in the same way by regulating code based on what it is, rather than what it does. By adopting a close-up view of computers and the Internet rather than a deeper functional perspective, judges and legislators have distorted the application of law to the Internet and granted greater protection to code in cyberspace than the law extends to analogous code in realspace.