I have learned an extraordinary amount from the teachers and critics who have helped me write this book. Hal Abelson, Bruce Ackerman, James Boyle, Jack Goldsmith, and Richard Posner gave patient and excellent advice on earlier drafts. I am grateful for their patience and extremely fortunate to have had their advice. Larry Vale and Sarah Whiting guided my reading in the field of architecture, though no doubt I was not as patient a student as I should have been. Sonya Mead helped me put into pictures what it would take a lawyer ten thousand words to say.

An army of students did most of the battle on earlier drafts of this book. Carolyn Bane, Rachel Barber, Enoch Chang, Ben Edelman, Timothy Ehrlich, Dawn Farber, Melanie Glickson, Bethany Glover, Nerlyn Gonzalez, Shannon Johnson, Karen King, Alex Macgillivray, Marcus Maher, David Melaugh, Teresa Ou, Laura Pirri, and Wendy Seltzer provided extensive, if respectful, criticism. And my assistants, Lee Hopkins and Catherine Cho, were crucial in keeping this army in line (and at bay).

Three students in particular have influenced my argument, though none are fairly called “students.” Harold Reeves takes the lead in chapter 8. Tim Wu forced me to rethink much of part 1. And Andrew Shapiro showed me the hopefulness in a future that I have described in very dark terms.

I am especially indebted to Catherine Marguerite Manley, whose extraordinary talent, both as a writer and a researcher, made it possible to finish this work long before it otherwise could have been finished. Thanks also to Tawen Chang and James Stahir for their careful review of the notes, and work to keep them honest.

This is a not a field where one learns by living in libraries. I have learned everything I know from the conversations I have had, or watched, with an extraordinary community of academics and activists, who have been struggling over the last five years both to understand what cyberspace is and to make it better. This community includes the scholars and writers I discuss in the text, especially the lawyers Yochai Benkler, James Boyle, Mark Lemley, David Post, and Pam Samuelson. I’ve also benefited greatly from conversations with nonlawyers, especially Hal Abelson, John Perry Barlow, Todd Lapin, Joseph Reagle, Paul Resnick, and Danny Weitzner. But perhaps more importantly, I’ve benefited from discussions with the activists, in particular the Center for Democracy and Technology, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, and the American Civil Liberties Union. They have made the issues real, and they have done much to defend at least some of the values that I think important.

This book would not have been written, however, but for a story by Julian Dibbell, a conference organized by Henry J. Perritt, and many arguments with David Johnson. I am grateful to all three for what they have taught.

I began this project as a fellow at Harvard’s Program on Ethics and the Professions. I am grateful to Dennis Thompson for his skeptical encouragement that year. The Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard Law School has made much of my research possible. I am grateful in particular to Lillian and Myles Berkman for that support, and especially to the center’s co-director and my sometime coteacher, Jonathan Zittrain, for his support and, more important, friendship. I’ve dedicated this book to the other co-director of the Berkman Center, Charlie Nesson, who has given me the space and support to do this work and a certain inspiration to push it differently.

But more significant than any of that support has been the patience, and love, of the person to whom I’ve dedicated my life, Bettina Neuefeind. Her love will seem crazy, and wonderful, for much more than a year.

Footnotes