Lawrence Lessig Elected to FSF Board of Directors

Free Software Foundation writes "Stanford Professor Lawrence Lessig was elected to the Free Software Foundation's Board of Directors on March 28, 2004. With Eben Moglen, the two most prominent academic legal minds on the subject of copyleft licensing now both serve as Directors of the Foundation. Professor Lessig's involvement will undoubtedly give a major boost to the FSF's ongoing efforts to neutralize legal threats to software freedom. The official announcement is here."

Comments

Those who can do, those who can't...

[ObviousGuy]

I think Lessig is one of the foremost thinkers when it comes to modern intellectual property law. His thoughts are, of course, more evolutionary than revolutionary and closer to the mainstream concepts of IP rights and responsibilities than many of us are aware. His ideas have great impact on the way many of us think about IP law.

However, his ideas are only effective within the walls of academia. He could actually enact through judicial activism many of the concepts and principles that he believes in if he were an actual judge.

Which begs the question, why would an obviously talented legal thinker be passed over time and again for judicial appointments?

Re:Those who can do, those who can't...

[vrtladept]

Well, he claims to be liberal in Free Culture.

If I was an aspiring legal type, I'd probably clerk for just about any appellate level judge that would take me. The experience would be too good to pass up.

how lessig lost the big one

[ciaran_o_riordan]

If you want more info about Lessig losing that big copyright case, you can read his account of it. (very interesting, it half reads like an apology.)

Here, in Lessigs style, is an anecdote (from the 80's) : A Microsoft sales rep messed up a 1.5million dollar deal - so the rep is called in to Gates' office and he says to Gates' "I guess I'm fired, yeh?", Gate's replies: "What? you just learned a big lesson and we footed a 1.5million dollar bill for that lesson - there's no way I'm gonna fire and have some other company gain that experience you just gained."

Lessig is a good smart guy, and FSF/GNU have been doing the impossible for 20+ years now. Lessig lost a failed a big test, there'll be other tests, and he'll try again because he cares about the subject matter.

(yes, this is my second time replying to the parent, the first reply was knee-jerk. This post is hopefully more considered - or at the least, it's longer.)

(bleh, this post needs more thinking, but I should go do something else instead.)