ABSTRACT: Setting Standards: Looking to the Internet for Models of Governance

Charles Vincent, Harvard University, and Jean Camp, Harvard University

7/31/2008
(Original Publish Date: 10/1/1999)

The Internet offers a model of minimal governance to ensure interoperability. If, as Lawrence Lessig suggests, code is law, then standards bodies are legislative bodies. Pursuing this analogy further, in this paper we examine standards making processes as if these processes were legislative processes. In the end, we suggest that by studying the legislative or standard setting process, some of the characteristics that define a standard or law can be predicted.