Godwin, Mike : Center for Democracy and Technology
Mike Godwin is a Policy Fellow at the Center for Democracy and Technology, in Washington, D.C., and a columnist
for American Lawyer magazine.
Summary
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.