Cyber Rights

Lawyer and writer Mike Godwin has been at the forefront of the struggle
to preserve freedom of speech on the Internet. In Cyber Rights he recounts the major
cases and issues in which he was involved and offers his views on free speech and
other constitutional rights in the digital age. Godwin shows how the law and the
Constitution apply, or should apply, in cyberspace and defends the Net against those
who would damage it for their own purposes.Godwin details events and phenomena that
have shaped our understanding of rights in cyberspace--including early antihacker
fears that colored law enforcement activities in the early 1990s, the struggle
between the Church of Scientology and its critics on the Net, disputes about
protecting copyrighted works on the Net, and what he calls "the great cyberporn
panic." That panic, he shows, laid bare the plans of those hoping to use our
children in an effort to impose a new censorship regime on what otherwise could be
the most liberating communications medium the world has seen. Most important, Godwin
shows how anyone--not just lawyers, journalists, policy makers, and the rich and
well connected--can use the Net to hold media and political institutions accountable
and to ensure that the truth is known.