Fifteen percent of all human consciousness that has ever existed is present and happening today. As we speed up and grow ever more connected via the Internet, what are the implications for this massive digital shift? In this episode recorded last year, renowned Harvard Law professor Lawrence Lessig discusses the state of the digital landscape and its impact on notions of freedom and democracy. — Read the rest
Lawrence Lessig (previously) has spent years articulating the case against corruption of the political sphere (and has written a superb book on the subject); now he's helping to design the political framework for Seed, a multiplayer game "in which players must collaborate (or compete) to rebuild society on a new, untamed planet."
Lawrence Lessig was once best-known as the special master in the Microsoft Antitrust Case, then he was best known as the co-founder of Creative Commons, then as a fire-breathing corruption fighter: in America, Compromised, a long essay (or short nonfiction book), Lessig proposes as lucid and devastating a theory of corruption as you'll ever find, a theory whose explanatory power makes today's terrifying news cycle make sense -- and a theory that demands action.
On the latest Webby Podcast, my pal and Webbys exec director David-Michel Davies has a rollicking and provocative conversation with the great activist lawyer Lawrence Lessig. In 2014, Lessig won the Webby Awards' Lifetime Achievement Award and damn he deserved it. — Read the rest
Federalism is hard: to reassure small states that bigger ones won't clobber them and their interests, federalist agreements usually have some kind of non-proportional representation built into their articles, such as a senate or an assembly where it's "one state, one vote" instead of "one person, one vote" — so each state gets as much say as any other, but the people who live in the bigger states have their votes diluted to a tiny fraction of the influence of the votes of people in the less populous states.
Lessig compares the current constitutional crisis — a lawless, reckless president; law enforcement officers flouting federal court orders — with previous crises, such as the impeachment of Nixon, and says the major difference between then and now: then, Congress had a bipartisan consensus that "they were engaged in the most serious job a member of Congress could have — because they knew that in a critical sense, the very stability of the Republic depended on them behaving as adults."
In an interview with the WSJ's CIO blog, Lawrence Lessig proposes that the existence of cryptographic tools that allow for "zero-knowledge" data-querying, combined with the potential liability from leaks, will drive companies to retain less data on their customers.
Lessig raised $1M for his amazing, unprecedented presidential bid, where he promises that, if he wins, he'll immediately pass campaign finance reform and then resign, handing over the presidency to his running-mate.
"Real reform will require changing the way campaigns are funded — moving from large-dollar private funding to small-dollar public funding," writes professor Lawrence Lessig in a New York Times op-ed today. Basically, what if elections relied more on lots of little contributions from lots of different regular working people, instead of relying on a small number of huge donations from the rich and powerful, or the big and powerful institutions that serve their interests. — Read the rest
Brian writes, "Campaign finance reformer and technology law professor Lawrence Lessig, and bestselling author Marianne Williamson, will be at the July 4th Seattle premiere of 'Killswitch: The battle to control the Internet'."
It's a fascinating, hour-long session in which Snowden articulates the case for blowing the whistle, the structural problems that created mass surveillance, and why it's not sufficient to stop the state from using our data — we should also limit their ability to collect it. — Read the rest
Colin Reed, the campaign manager for Scott Brown's primary race, says that because senate rules don't define his boss as a lobbyist, he'll use his "legal options" against Lessig (Brown, a former Mass. state senator, works for "Nixon Peabody, a law and lobby firm, as counsel").
Levi says, "Lawrence Lessig will be lecturing at the University of Chicago in October, launching a new series with a series of talks on institutional corruption, with separate talks on the problem in Congress, finance, the media, and the academy, then wrapping up with a lecture that covers possible remedies."
Slashdot recorded a must-watch video with Lawrence Lessig about the Mayday.US anti-PAC that is raising money to elect politicians who'll enact meaningful campaign finance reform.
Lawrence Lessig has announced the next step in his campaign against corruption in American politics with the launch of MAYDAY, a Superpac intended to raise enough money through small donations (and, eventually, major ones) to elect a large enough roster of congressmen and senators that they can pass meaningful campaign finance reform, making Superpacs and other perversions of democracy a bad memory. — Read the rest
Ten years ago today Lessig's Free Culture, free online, under a Creative Commons license: Larry Lessig's new book "Free Culture" — which is about the value of freedom to cultural production — is out in stores today, and, unlike his previous two books, Larry has foudn the leverage to convince his publisher to let him release the full text of the new book online under a Creative Commons license. — Read the rest
Last August, I posted about a lawsuit brought by Larry Lessig and the Electronic Frontier Foundation against Australia's Liberation Music, who hold the rights to "Lisztomania," a song by the French band Phoenix. Lessig had used brief clips from Lisztomania in a presentation on remix culture, and when the lecture was posted to Youtube, Phoenix Music sent a series of bogus copyright notices and threats to Youtube and Lessig. — Read the rest