Free speech is the right to be free from punishment for your speech. Just as there are modalities of forces regulating the individual, the modalities of rights protect her. These rights function together to limit the constraints on her. In a nation where there is free speech, the protection must suffice. In the US, state cannot arrest one for promoting drugs but norms, market and architecture wouldn't be so protective of free speech. People would ridicule one for attempting at speech; only a millionaire can afford a TV ad campaign and there aren't many speaker's corners. 9 Free speech is not that free in US.
On the other hand, the current cyberspace is a perfect place for free speech because it was built to be. Lessig mentions relative anonymity, decentralized distribution, multiple points of access, no necessary tie to geography, no simple system to identify content and tools of encryption among the features that make it difficult to control speech. This is the First Amendment in cyberspace and it is much stronger than First Amendment in realspace, and at the same time successfully exported to the whole world. 10
Internet changes the face of Publication. In a place where everybody can become an author and a publisher, no truth can be hidden. Nevertheless, credibility of such publication is questionable when not assessed by peer review. Lessig proposes that intermediateries, independent agencies can evaluate the significance of the work replacing traditional publishing houses.
There is a class of speech that is regulable; for instance sexually explicit speech that is ``harmful to minors''. In order to prevent this, the content and the user must be identified. There are two possible ways to accomplish it: zoning and filtering. Regulable speech may require digital IDs and only adults will be given access, or unwanted content can be filtered out. However, the danger in filtering software like PICS is that they can be deployed in upstream providers essentially encouraging ``censorship''. In the former, the user knows what he cannot access, in the second he has no idea what he is missing (like PICS). Therefore, Lessig considers the former solution more appropriate.
The Internet has a design that gives everyone the possibility to broadcast without the usual expenses and regulation associated; it is the architecture that the US framers would have dreamt of. It is up to us not to spoil it.