Lawrence Lessig

In Code and Other Laws of Cyberspace (1999), Lessig argued that four forces — architecture, markets, norms and law — jointly constrain what people can do, and that whoever writes the code is effectively writing the rules. "Code is law" has outlived most of the commentary on it.

He took Eldred v. Ashcroft to the US Supreme Court, challenging the act that had extended copyright by twenty years, and lost 7–2 in January 2003. By then he had already co-founded Creative Commons in 2001 — a way around the problem once the way through was closed. He was a mentor and friend to Aaron Swartz.