[...] An amicus curiae ("friend of the court") brief deposed by a group of prominent American computer scientists, cryptographers and programmers argued their point:

It cannot seriously be argued that any form of computer code may be regulated without reference to First Amendment doctrine. The path from idea to human language to source code to object code is a continuum. As one moves from one to the other, the levels of precision and, arguably, abstraction increase, as does the level of training necessary to discern the idea from the expression. [...] But each for expresses the same idea, albeit in different ways. (Abelson et al. 2000)

[...] Rather than being part of an invisible infrastructure that allowed people to communicate or consume through the Internet, or being a form of expression of ideas, code, Lessig argues, is the sociolegal fabric of cyberspace: "In real space we recognise how laws regulate--through constitutions, statutes, and other legal codes. In cyberspace we must understand how code regulates--how the software and hardware that make cyberspace what it is regulate cyberspace as it is" (Lessig 1999, 6). He goes on to say, "We live life in real space, subject to the effects of code. We live ordinary lives, subject to the effects of code. We live social and political lives, subject to the effects of code. Code regulates all these aspects of our lives, more pervasively over time than other regulatory in our life" (Lessig 1999, 233). [...]

trenchantly criticize code art