What is The Code War?

Submitted by admin on Fri, 2013-04-26 14:18

Ever wonder why there are so many never ending tech policy and political battles?

Why there are so many recurring:

Content battles over copyright and anti-piracy enforcement?
Software battles over open source versus proprietary software and the legitimacy of software patents?

Broadband battles over net neutrality, data caps, and spectrum allocations?

General battles over online privacy, surveillance, cybersecurity, and hacking?

Ever wonder why so many of the same people and entities are involved in the same tech policy and political battles over and over again?

The answer is it is an ideological struggle, but not the 20^th century kind with which most people are familiar, for example like progressive vs. conservative, or republican vs. democrat. This is a new and different kind of ideological struggle between realspace and cyberspace that is unique to the 21^st century and to the Internet Age.

Just like The Cold War was an ideological struggle for whose beliefs and values would gain global supremacy in the realspace world, “The Code War” is a 21^st century ideological struggle over whose beliefs and values will predominate in the cyberspace world where virtual cyber-societies are being built on top of the Internet’s World Wide Web.

I coined the new term “The Code War” in order to spotlight and describe this very real and increasingly fierce ideological struggle between the real world of realspace, and those who seek a very different ideology to rule cyberspace, the online or virtual world.

I also have coined the new term “Codism” as in the ideology of “free and open” computer code, to describe this nascent and burgeoning 21^st century ideology of cyberspace, which many know as the “Free Culture” movement.

While those who believe in cyberspace values are already very familiar with The Code War that they are offensively waging, those in realspace playing defense are not.

Those in realspace are well aware of the many different policy battles that they are forced to fight to protect themselves and their sovereign values, and they are also painfully aware of their persistent opponents. However, most are not aware of how all these tech policy and political fights fit together ideologically or what their opponents’ ideological end-game is.

Who should be interested in The Code War? Anyone with an interest in: proprietary content, software and broadband networks; copyright, patent and trademark law, protection and enforcement; the IP transition, modernization of obsolete communications laws, and spectrum availability and allocation; privacy and cybersecurity law, protection and enforcement; the U.S-EU Free Trade Agreement, the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP), and the Anti Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA); and International Telecommunications Union (ITU) or United Nations actions related to the Internet and cyberspace.

If you want to learn more about ‘The Code War,” from a realspace perspective, please read this PowerPoint presentation at www.TheCodeWar.org. Click here for the "What is The Code War" presentation.