lessig's 4 modalities

Lessig's own drawing is better than this one for a number of reasons, but this one I designed is cute too. I used a canned graphic from Microsoft for the figure. Lessig's four modalities 1st ammendment analysis free speech and the Web are:

Law Norms Market Architecture

"Modalities of constraint (power) function as a sword against the object regulated;
modalities of protection (rights) function as a shield for the regulated against constraint."

1st amendment righs act as a shield against the goverment coming after the governed and inprisoning us and killing us and restricting our free speech. It's not about what we say to each other particularly. The sword and shield concepts are powerful.

The point is we don't have freedom of speech we have protections against the government outlawing free speech. There are lots of constraints on "free speech" - when is the last time you told someone the truth they didn't want to hear or that was unkind?