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Lawrence Lessig

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Lawrence Lessig

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Rapid City, South Dakota, United States>U.S.| death_date =| death_place =| occupation = Founder, Creative Commons
Founder, Stanford Center for Internet and Society
Professor, Stanford Law School| salary =| networth =| spouse = Bettina Neuefeind| children =| website = www.lessig.org| footnotes =}}{{distinguish|Lawrence Lessing}}Lawrence Lessig (born June 3 1961) is an American academic and political activist. He is 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 and a former board member of the Electronic Frontier Foundation.(1) He is best known as a proponent of reduced legal restrictions on copyright, trademark and radio frequency spectrum, particularly in technology applications.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.(2) 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.(3) 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.(4)Despite having decided to forgo running for Congress himself, Lessig remained interested in attempting to change Congress to reduce corruption.(5) 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.(6)

Academic career

Born in Rapid City, South Dakota, Lessig 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.Prior to joining Stanford he taught at the Harvard Law School, where he was the Berkman Professor of Law, affiliated with the Berkman Center for Internet & Society, and the University of Chicago Law School. Lessig is considered a liberal, but he clerked for two influential conservative judges: Richard Posner and Justice Antonin Scalia.

Attitudes

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 Teenage Republican serving as the Youth Governor for Pennsylvania through the YMCA Youth & Government programweblink 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 an undergraduate 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 the usual libertarianism. While Lessig remains skeptical of government intervention, he favors regulation by calling himself “a constitutionalist”. Because of his relative youth, and his intellectually innovative views of American legal theory, Lessig has often been cited as a potential candidate to fill vacant federal appellate judgeships in a future Democratic presidential administration.{{fact|date=August 2007}}In his blog, Lessig has come out in favor of Democratic primary candidate Barack Obama, citing the transformative nature of Obama's campaign as one of his chief reasons. On October 13, 2008, Lessig hosted a letter on Lessig Blog from the McCain campaign to YouTube, LLC. The letter demanded that the video-sharing mogul better regulate its copyright complaint take-down policy. In favor of the issues addressed in the letter, Lessig stated, “Bravo to the campaign.” However, Lessig’s post denotes more accurately an appeal for YouTube to revise its copyright claim dispute policies rather than an actual endorsement of the McCain campaign.A campaign to draft Lessig to run for the US Congress from the Bay Area began in February 2008.(7)

"Code is law"

In computer science, “code” typically refers to the text of a computer program (i.e., 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 Method

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Lessig presenting “The Ethics of the Free Culture Movement” at Wikimania 2006.

Lessig is also known for using a style of computer presentations typified by rapid display of short phrases or pictures.(8) James MacLennan calls his presentation style the “Lessig Method”.(9)

"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.(10) In 2006, Lessig was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.(11) Lessig is also a well-known critic of copyright term extensions.He proposed the concept of “Free Culture”.(12) He also supports free software and open spectrum.(13) At his “Free culture” keynote at OSCON 2002, half of his speech was also about software patents, which he views as a rising threat to both free/open source software and innovation.

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Lessig and Jimmy Wales at the iCommons iSummit07 in Dubrovnik

Wiki-related activities

In March 2006, Lessig joined the board of advisors of the Digital Universe project.(14)A few months later, Lessig gave a talk on the ethics of the Free Culture Movement at the 2006 Wikimania conference.

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.(15) 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.(16) In August 2006, he succeeded in persuading the New Jersey Supreme Court to radically restrict the scope of immunity that had protected nonprofits which failed to prevent sexual abuse from legal liability.(17)

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. (Lessig’s comments on his blog)Artist group Monochrom performed a "Love Song for Lessig" on Boing Boing TV in the 2007-11-15 episode.(18) The Austrian-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.

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 Actweblink)
- 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 weblink. 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.”weblink
MPAA v. 2600 (submitted an amicus brief with Yochai Benkler in support of 2600weblink)

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) licensed download weblink
Free Culture (2004) ISBN 978-1-59420-006-9 - available as a free Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommerical licensed download weblink
(Code: Version 2.0) (2006) ISBN 978-0-465-03914-2 - available as a free Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike (by-sa) licensed download weblink
(Remix: Making Art and Commerce Thrive in the Hybrid Economy) (2008) ISBN 978-1-594-20172-1