The chapter further posits that the incidence of digital authoritarianism pervades Africa and has been further entrenched by the incidence of the COVID-19 pandemic, which provided autocratic leaders with the opportunity to restrict expression and free speech with the pretext of combating disinformation and cybercrime. Digital tools are increasingly being used to promote mass surveillance of citizens, internet shutdown, electoral manipulation, corporate espionage, censorship, etc.

Despite the optimism of liberation that digital democracy promises, it has been reversed by African leaders to promote authoritarianism: digital authoritarianism. This revolution, which led to an increase in democratic activities, was given impetus by the fourth industrial revolution, occasioned by the internet to engender a digital democratic space characterized by increased political communication and easy access to information.

Code is not just for lawyers and policymakers it is a must-read for everyone concerned with survival of democratic values in the Information Age.The spread of democracy in Africa in the 1990s, often dubbed the third wave of democracy, was a period of democratic optimism on the continent. Lessig shows how code-the architecture and law of cyberspace-can make a domain, site, or network free or restrictive how technological architectures influence people's behavior and the values they adopt and how changes in code can have damaging consequences for individual freedoms. Commercial forces will dictate the change, and architecture-the very structure of cyberspace itself-will dictate the form our interactions can and cannot take.Ĭode And Other Laws of Cyberspace is an exciting examination of how the core values of cyberspace as we know it-intellectual property, free speech, and privacy-are being threatened and what we can do to protect them. Cyberspace will no longer be a world of relative freedom instead it will be a world of perfect control where our identities, actions, and desires are monitored, tracked, and analyzed for the latest market research report. Harvard Professor Lawrence Lessig warns that, if we're not careful we'll wake up one day to discover that the character of cyberspace has changed from under us. Should cyberspace be regulated_ _ How can it be done_ _ It's a cherished belief of techies and net denizens everywhere that cyberspace is fundamentally impossible to regulate.

Code and other laws of cyberspace