University of Miami Law School University of Miami School of Law Institutional Repository Articles Faculty and Deans 2003 [email protected]: Toward a Critical Theory of Cyberspace A. Michael Froomkin University of Miami School of Law, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://repository.law.miami.edu/fac_articles Part of the Internet Law Commons, Jurisprudence Commons, and the Law and Society Commons Recommended Citation A. Michael Froomkin, [email protected]: Toward a Critical Theory of Cyberspace, 116 Harv. L. Rev. 749 (2003). This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Faculty and Deans at University of Miami School of Law Institutional Repository. It has been accepted for inclusion in Articles by an authorized administrator of University of Miami School of Law Institutional Repository. For more information, please contact [email protected]. VOLUME 116 JANUARY 2003 NUMBER 3 HARVARD LAW REVIEW ARTICLES [email protected]: TOWARD A CRITICAL THEORY OF CYBERSPACE A. Michael Froomkin TABLE OF CONTENTS IN TR O D UC T IO N ............................................................................................................................... 751 I. H ABERM AS ON D ISCOURSE THEORY ...................................................................................... 757 A . Critica l T h eory ..................................................................................................................... 761 B . S u bstantive C riteria............................................................................................................ 764 C. Discourse Ethics and PracticalD iscourses...................................................................... 767 II. THE INTERNET STANDARDS PROCESS: A DISCOURSE ABOUT DISCOURSE ..................... 777 A. W hat Is the In ternet? .......................................................................................................... 778 B. A Short Social and InstitutionalHistory of Internet Standard-Making...................... 782 1. T he Prehistoric Period: 1968-1972 ............................................................................... 783 2. Form alization B egins: 1972- 1986 ................................................................................. 785 3. IETF Formed, Further Formalization: 1986-1992 ..................................................... 786 4. Institutionalization and Legitim ation: 1992-1995 ...................................................... 787 (a) The Internet Architecture Board (IAB) ................................................................. 788 (b) The Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) ...................................................... 792 5. The Internet Standard Creation Process Today (1996-Present) ................................ 794 III. THE INTERNET STANDARDS PROCESS AS A CASE STUDV IN DISCOURSE ETHICS ......... 796 A. The IETF StandardsProcess as the Best PracticalDiscourse ....................................... 798 B. Counter: The IETF Standards Process Is Too Male and Monolingual To Be the "B est" P ractical Discourse .............................................................................................. 805 C. Counter. It's Too Specialized To Matter ............................................................................ 8o8 1. The Claim that the IETF Is "Technical" and Thus Outside the "Public Sphere".. 8o8 2. The IETF Debates Whether an RFC Is "Law ..................................................... 812 D. Can the IETF Example Be Generalized?..................................................................... 815 IV. APPLICATIONS: CRITIQUES OF INTERNET STANDARDS FORMED O UT SID E T H E IE T F .................................................................................. ....................... 8 18 A. N oninstitutionalStandard-M aking .................................................................................. 819 B. Socializationand the Reproduction of Non-Hierarchy.............................................. 82o 749 750 HARVARD LAW REVIEW [Vol. I16:749 C. Delegation: The Usenet Example ....................................................................................... 821 1. Mass Revenge/Vigilante Justice: The Usenet Spam Problem and Its (Partial) Solution ............................................................................................................................ 825 2. T he U senet D eath Penalty ............................................................................................ 829 D. R esponses to E m ail Span ................................................................................................... 831 E. M arket-Induced Standardization...................................................................................... 835 F ICAN N : The Creation of a N ew Governance Institution................................................. 838 1. W hy ICA N N M atters ..................................................................................................... 842 2. ICAN N 's Legitim ation Crisis ....................................................................................... 844 3. Learning from ICA NN .................................................................................................. 852 V. T ECHNOLOGIES FOR D EM OCRACY ......................................................................................... 855 A. H ardwarefor Dem ocracy .................................................................................................... 858 B. W eblogs and B logs ................................................................................................................ 859 C. W iki Webs and Other Collaborative Drafting Tools ...................................................... 88o D. Slash and Other Collaborative Filtering Tools ................................................................. 863 E. From Open Government to Community DeliberationTools ............................................ 867 VI. CONCLUSION ........................................................................................................................... 871 [email protected]: TOWARD A CRITICAL THEORY OF CYBERSPACE A. Michael Froomkin* INTRODUCTION In what has been called "a monumental achievement ...that pro- vides a systematic account of major issues in contemporary jurispru- dence, constitutional theory, political and social philosophy, and the theory of democracy,"' Jiirgen Habermas has proposed a discourse eth- ics as the basis for testing the legitimacy of legal institutions. Haber- mas seeks to identify and explain a method for justifying valid law and legal institutions, or at least the procedures necessary to make le- gitimate law. His approach blends an abstract theory of justice with a sociological theory of law that is grounded in empirical observations.' Attempting to bring moral philosophy into the realm of political sci- ence, Habermas seeks nothing less than to describe a system that can validate moral choices, notably those about how society should be or- ganized. Habermas proposes a way to identify norms that are pre- sumptively legitimate because they were reached according to morally justified procedures. In so doing, Habermas directly confronts the most difficult obstacles to moralizing about social organization, includ- ing the fact/value distinction,3 false consciousness,4 and the injustices * Professor of Law, University of Miami School of Law. This paper had a long gestation for a piece concerning the Internet, during which I accumulated debts to an unusually large number of helpful readers, more than I dare list here. Previous drafts also benefited from discourse at the Georgetown University Law Center (2ooi), a Stanford Law School faculty colloquium (2ooo), the conference on Culture & the Humanities (Winston-Salem, 1999), and - under another title - the I7th IVR World Congress: Challenges to Law at the End of the 2oth Century (Bologna, 1995) and the Law and Society Association Annual Meeting (Toronto, '995). Caroline Bradley has had to put up with it from the start, and for that and everything else, no thanks suffice. 1 Michel Rosenfeld, Law as Discourse: Bridging the Gap Between Democracy and Rights, io8 HARV. L. REV. 1163, j164 (1995) (reviewing JURGEN HABERMAS, BETWEEN FACTS AND NORMS: CONTRIBUTIONS TO A DISCOURSE THEORY OF LAW AND DEMOCRACY (William Rehg trans., 1995) [hereinafter BETWEEN FACTS AND NORMS]). 2 See id. 3 See, e.g., JORGEN HABERMAS, MORAL CONSCIOUSNESS AND COMMUNICATIVE ACTION 176-77 (Christian Lenhardt & Shierry Weber Nicholsen trans., i9go) [hereinafter MORAL CONSCIOUSNESS]. 4 False consciousness is the "holding of beliefs that are contrary to one's personal or group interest and which thereby contribute to the maintenance of the disadvantaged position of the self or the group." John T. Jost & Mahzarin R. Banaji, The Role of Stereotyping in System- Justificationand the Productionof False Consciousness, 33 BRIT. J. SOC. PSYCHOL. 1, 3 (994). HARVARD LAW REVIEW [Vol. 116:749 and imbalances caused by unequal distributions of power and knowl- edge. The outcome of this inquiry is of enormous relevance to the con- struction and legitimacy of the legal system,' especially because Habermas argues that only a social system that guarantees basic civil rights and enables meaningful participation by all those affected by a decision can make legitimate decisions. In the spirit of Habermas's project of linking