Lawrence Lessig

Not to be confused with Lawrence Lessing.

Lawrence Lessig
Born	June 3, 1961 (1961-06-03) Rapid City, South Dakota, U.S.
Occupation	Founder, Creative Commons Founder, Stanford Center for Internet and Society Professor, Harvard Law School
Spouse	Bettina Neuefeind
Website
lessig.org

Interview with Lawrence Lessig in 2009.

Lawrence "Larry" Lessig (born June 3, 1961) is an American academic and political activist. He is best known as a proponent of reduced legal restrictions on copyright, trademark, and radio frequency spectrum, particularly in technology applications, and he has called for state-based activism to promote substantive reform of government with a Second Constitutional Convention.

He is a director of the Edmond J. Safra Foundation Center for Ethics at Harvard University and a professor of law at Harvard Law School. Prior to rejoining Harvard, he was a professor of law at Stanford Law School and founder of its Center for Internet and Society. Lessig is a founding board member of Creative Commons, a board member of the Software Freedom Law Center, an advisory board member of the Sunlight Foundation and a former board member of the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

Academic career

Born in Rapid City, South Dakota, Lessig grew up in Williamsport, Pennsylvania, and earned a B.A. in Economics and a B.S. in Management (Wharton School) from the University of Pennsylvania, an M.A. in philosophy from the University of Cambridge (Trinity) in England, and a Juris Doctor from Yale Law School in 1989. After graduating from law school, he clerked for a year for Judge Richard Posner, at the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals in Chicago, Illinois and another year for Justice Antonin Scalia at the Supreme Court.

Lessig started his academic career at the University of Chicago Law School, where he was Professor from 1991 to 1997. From 1997 to 2000, he was at Harvard Law School, holding for a year the chair of Berkman Professor of Law, affiliated with the Berkman Center for Internet & Society. He subsequently joined Stanford Law School, where he established the school's Center for Internet and Society.

Lessig returned to Harvard in December 2008 as Professor and Director of the "Edmond J. Safra Foundation Center for Ethics".

Political activism

Lessig is currently considered politically liberal. As a law clerk, however, he worked for both Judge Richard Posner and Justice Antonin Scalia, two influential conservative judges.

Lessig has emphasized in interviews that his philosophy experience at Cambridge radically changed his values and career path. Previously, he had held strong conservative or libertarian political views, desired a career in business, was a highly active member of Teenage Republicans, serving as the Youth Governor for Pennsylvania through the YMCA Youth and Government program in 1978 and almost pursued a Republican political career.

What was intended to be a year abroad at Cambridge convinced him instead to stay another two years to complete a graduate degree in philosophy there and develop his changed political values. During this time, he also traveled in the Eastern Bloc, so acquiring a lifelong interest in Eastern European law and politics.

Lessig refuses to embrace conventional libertarianism. While Lessig remains skeptical of government intervention, he favors regulation by calling himself "a constitutionalist". In his blog, Lessig came out in favor of then-Democratic primary candidate Barack Obama, citing the transformative nature of Obama's campaign as one of his chief reasons. On one occasion, Lessig also commended the John McCain campaign for discussing fair use rights in a letter to YouTube where it took issue with YouTube for indulging overreaching copyright claims leading to the removal of various campaign videos.

In a speech in 2011, Lessig revealed that he was disappointed with Obama's performance in office, criticizing it as a "betrayal", and he criticized the president for using "the (Hillary) Clinton playbook". Lessig has called for state governments to call for a national constitutional convention, and that the convention be populated by a "random proportional selection of citizens" which he suggested would work effectively. He said "politics is a rare sport where the amateur is better than the professional."

"Code is law"

In computer science, "code" typically refers to the text of a computer program (the source code). In law, "code" can refer to the texts that constitute statutory law. In his book Code and Other Laws of Cyberspace, Lessig explores the ways in which code in both senses can be instruments for social control, leading to his dictum that "Code is law." Lessig later updated his work in order to keep up with the prevailing views of the time and released the book as Code: Version 2.0 in December 2006.

Free Culture

In 2002, Lessig received the Award for the Advancement of Free Software from the Free Software Foundation (FSF), and on March 28, 2004 he was elected to the FSF's Board of Directors. In 2006, Lessig was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Lessig is also a well-known critic of copyright term extensions.

He proposed the concept of "Free Culture". He also supports free software and open spectrum. At his Free Culture keynote at the O'Reilly Open Source Convention 2002, half of his speech was about software patents, which he views as a rising threat to both free/open source software and innovation.

Lessig and Jimmy Wales at the iCommons iSummit07 in Dubrovnik.

In March 2006, Lessig joined the board of advisors of the Digital Universe project. A few months later, Lessig gave a talk on the ethics of the Free Culture Movement at the 2006 Wikimania conference.

Lessig claimed in 2009 that, because 70% of young people obtain digital information from illegal sources, the law should be changed.

Money in politics

At the iCommons iSummit 07, Lessig announced that he will stop focusing his attention on copyright and related matters and will work on political corruption instead. This new work may be partially facilitated through his wiki, "Lessig Wiki", which he has encouraged the public to use to document cases of corruption. Lessig criticized the revolving door phenomenon in which legislators and staffers leave office to become lobbyists and have become beholden to special interests.

In February 2008, a Facebook group formed by law professor John Palfrey encouraged him to run for Congress from California's 12th congressional district, the seat vacated by the death of U.S. Representative Tom Lantos. Later that month, after forming an "exploratory project", the decision was made not to run for the vacant seat.

Despite having decided to forgo running for Congress himself, Lessig remained interested in attempting to change Congress to reduce corruption. To this end, he worked with political consultant Joe Trippi to launch a web based project called "Change Congress". In a press conference on March 20, 2008, Lessig explained that he hoped the Change Congress website would help provide technological tools voters could use to hold their representatives accountable and reduce the influence of money on politics. He is a board member of MAPLight.org, a nonprofit research group illuminating the connection between money and politics.

Lessig has known president Barack Obama since their days of both teaching law at the University of Chicago, and had been mentioned as a candidate to head the Federal Communications Commission, which regulates the telecommunications industry. However, this position is now held by Julius Genachowski.

At his talk at the 2009 Aspen Ideas Festival, Professor Lessig talked about Forbin Problems in a talk entitled Will Technology Change Our Lives? and also about his idea that the American public has lost faith in the central institution of our democracy, Congress.

Constitutional convention

In 2010, Lessig began to organize for a national constitutional convention. He co-founded Fix Congress First! with Joe Trippi. Lessig called for a convention to propose amendments to the United States Constitution in a September 24-25, 2011 conference co-chaired by the Tea Party Patriots' national coordinator, in Lessig's October 5 book, Republic, Lost: How Money Corrupts Congress – and a Plan to Stop It, and at the Occupy protest in Washington, DC. Reporter Dan Froomkin said the book offers a manifesto for the Occupy Wall Street protestors, focusing on the core problem of corruption in both political parties and their elections. Lessig's initial constitutional amendment would allow legislatures to limit political contributions from non-citizens, including corporations, anonymous organizations, and foreign nationals, and he also supports public campaign financing and electoral college reform to establish the one person, one vote principle. Lessig's web site convention.idea.informer.com allows anyone to propose and vote on constitutional amendments.

Rootstrikers

Change Congress, founded by Lessig and Joe Trippi, the Fix Congress First project, and the Rootstrikers project were created to help volunteers to address the problem of money in politics. In November 2011, Lessig announced all three projects would become part of the United Republic organization, along with Dylan Ratigan’s Get Money Out campaign.

Combating sexual abuse

In May 2005, it was revealed that Lessig had experienced sexual abuse by the director at the American Boychoir School which he had attended as an adolescent. Lessig reached a settlement with the school in the past, under confidential terms. He revealed his experiences in the course of representing another student victim, John Hardwicke, in court. In August 2006, he succeeded in persuading the New Jersey Supreme Court to restrict the scope of immunity radically, which had protected nonprofits that failed to prevent sexual abuse from legal liability.

Media references

Lessig appears as a character in a 2005 episode of the television political drama The West Wing ("The Wake Up Call", season 6, episode 14). Lessig’s character, portrayed by Christopher Lloyd, is intended to be a realistic depiction including such details as citing his book The Future of Ideas and his expertise in Eastern European constitutional law.

Artist group Monochrom performed a "Love Song for Lessig" on Boing Boing TV in the November 15, 2007 episode. The German term "lässig" (meaning "cool" or "relaxed") is pronounced the same as Lessig's last name, and "Love Song for Lessig" uses the homonym for humor.

"Prometeus - The Media Revolution", a video produced by Italian internet consulting company Casaleggio Associati that attempts to predict the future of media over the next 40 to 50 years, proposes Lawrence Lessig to become the new US Secretary of Justice and declare copyright to be illegal in 2020.

Notable cases

• Hardwicke v. American Boychoir (representing plaintiff John Hardwicke) Pending
• Golan v. Gonzales (representing multiple plaintiffs)
• Eldred v. Ashcroft (representing plaintiff Eric Eldred) Lost
• Kahle v. Ashcroft—(also see Brewster Kahle) Dismissed
• United States v. Microsoft (special master and author of an amicus brief addressing the Sherman Act)
  • Lessig was appointed special master by Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson in 1997. The appointment was vacated by the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. The appellate court ruled that the powers granted to Lessig exceeded the scope of the Federal statute providing for special masters. Judge Jackson then solicited Lessig’s amicus brief.
  • Lessig himself says about this appointment: "Did Justice Jackson pick me to be his special master because he had determined I was the perfect mix of Holmes and Ed Felten? No, I was picked because I was a Harvard Law Professor teaching the law of cyberspace. Remember: So is 'fame' made."
• MPAA v. 2600 (submitted an amicus brief with Yochai Benkler in support of 2600)

Bibliography

• Code and Other Laws of Cyberspace (2000) ISBN 978-0-465-03913-5
• The Future of Ideas (2001) ISBN 978-0-375-50578-2 - available as a free Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommerical (by-nc)
• Free Culture (2004) ISBN 978-1-59420-006-9 - available as a free Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial
• Code: Version 2.0 (2006) ISBN 978-0-465-03914-2 - available as a free Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike (by-sa)
• Remix: Making Art and Commerce Thrive in the Hybrid Economy (2008) ISBN 978-1-594-20172-1 - available as a free Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs (by-nc-nd)
• Republic, Lost: How Money Corrupts Congress--and a Plan to Stop It (2011) ISBN 978-0446576437

See also

• 99 Percent Declaration
• Copyleft
• Free software movement
• Free content
• FreeCulture.org
• Open educational resources
• Gratis versus Libre
• Open content
• Law of the Horse
• Lobbying in the United States
• Second Constitution of the United States proposal for constitutional reform

External links

• Official website Lessig (includes blog 2002-2009)
• Official website Lessig Blog, v2
• Lawrence Lessig on Twitter
• Lawrence Lessig's channel on YouTube
• Lawrence Lessig at Harvard Law School
  • Profile at the Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics
• Rootstrikers
• Lawrence Lessig at TED Conferences
• Appearances on C-SPAN
• Lawrence Lessig on Charlie Rose
• Lawrence Lessig at the Internet Movie Database
• Works by or about Lawrence Lessig in libraries (WorldCat catalog)

Lawrence Lessig collected news and commentary at The Economist

• Lawrence Lessig collected news and commentary at The New York Times
• Republic, Lost: How Money Corrupts Congress—and a Plan to Stop It talk by Lawrence Lessig