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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."
Lessig was elected two weeks ago and no one knew until today? How does that work out?
It's hard to be religious when certain people are never incinerated by bolts of lightning.
I still think that Eben Moglen sounds like the beginning of that Def Leppard song.
I get nothing from the new guy. 'cept maybe "Less sig, more post"? On that note, I depart.
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?
I have been pwned because my
My hats off to Anybody who can find a way to score a +5 Funny off of this article.
continue to do nothing except "advocate" free software
Evidently spoken by someone who uses free software like it was some kind of naturally happening thing...
If not for the FSF, and Eblen amd RMS and the other, you might be posting your drivel with some non-free software, because some corporation would have managed to squash free software in order to grab more marketshare.
I wish people like you were less ingrate and remembered whom you owe having the choice of running free software in the first place to.
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
They want their mindnumbingly boring story back.
Perhaps. But remember that he was on the losing side of the Supreme Court case against the Copyright Term Extension Act.
It certainly can't hurt to get all the assistance we can, so I'm pleased that he's been elected to the FSF Board, but let's not kid ourselves: we're very likely to lose the intellectual property fight -- there are far too many large corporations that are in favor of draconian and one-sided (favorable to them) intellectual property laws, and everyone that matters, including the Supreme Court, favors the large corporations.
Interestingly enough, those very laws are exactly what will keep Microsoft in their monopoly position.
Use 'slashdot stuff' in the subject line in any email you send me if you want to get past the spam filter.
Lessig's latest book, Free Culture, is available online for free (both as in speech and as in beer). It was reviewed on Slashdot two weeks ago. I haven't read it yet, but I've read one of his earlier books, Code and Other Laws of Cyberspace, and thought it was excellent.
Lessig is no liberal, he clerked for conservative Supreme Court Justice Kennedy.
Lessig is definitely not in the "all software should be Free" camp. He tends more to suggest that we should continue to feed the public domain, which means shorter copyrights, not the elimination of them.
So really, he's much more moderate than RMS, so having him on the board should likely make the FSF a little more Congress-friendly.
...will be in the courts. We see it with Linux and SCO, and that won't be the last major court battle over free software. Free software (and open source, for those that worry about that distinction) has proven that it's up to snuff technically. And intelligent people can disagree over ease-of-use compared to commercial products.
But the one area where proprietary software really has had free software outclassed is in legal muscle. Of course, some companies (Novell, IBM, HP for a few) have supported free software because they stand to benefit from it. But free software needs as many sharp legal experts as it can get--that will support free software for the sake of free software. It's nice to see that this is happening.
...do they like lawyers or not? ;o)
Not true; Lessig clerked for Justice Scalia on the Supreme Court, and for Richard Posner on the Seventh Circuit.
Conservative judges can, and do, hire liberal clerks, and vice versa. Scalia, in particular, is known for hiring liberal clerks regularly. Lessig wrote an article for The Industry Standard about why there's nothing odd about this.
Bzzzzt. Wrong. Why don't you read one of his books before you start accusing him of being the exact opposite of what he is.
An extremist is someone who believes themselves to be absolutely unquestionably right, without considering the opinion of the opposition. Sounds like yourself. Just because Lessig is willing to look at both sides of the issue, which you obviously aren't capable of, doesn't mean he's a sellout to either side. He's simply willing to actualy expend some thought about the problem, instead of demanding one way or the other all the time.
I'm sorry you don't agree with lessig. I'm also sorry can't understand the concept of comprimise. I'm also sorry you can't be bothered to contemplate the other side of your argument. You're obviously not a musician, writer, or artist. Just because you want to take their works for free doesn't mean it's right.
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.)
Expert in software patents or patent law? Contribute to the ESP wiki!
I don't think of Lessig as an absolutist like Stallman, he's an intellectual and academic, and academics generally spend too much time thinking and analyzing to have such a black-and-white view of the world. He's taken a stand to protect the very existence of concepts like the public domain. Yes, Creative Commons offers more flexibility in licensing format than the FSF offerings, but that's done in the domain that Lessig knows. I'd love to see the FSF become as warm and fuzzy and accepting as Creative Commons is, and I have no reason to believe that Lessig won't help with that process.
> "This idea that everybody has to release his source under GPL or something complaint is getting to my nerves."
free vs. unfree is a line in the sand, we could spend time debating it, or we could just use the GPL. The G is for General - there was an EmacsPL, a GCC-PL, etc. But RMS realised that it would be nice for other people to be able to share code between projects, so he made a General license for all software. If you use it, your software can be integrated with other peoples software easier - allowing more programming and less lawyering.
Don't worry, using a General license doesn't prevent you from being a unique little snowflake.
Expert in software patents or patent law? Contribute to the ESP wiki!
Over the years Lessig has always been the goto guy for comments putting the FSF actions and announcements in a digestible context. Now that he is officially part of the organization he won't be able to provide an objective opinion. Is that a gain or a loss?
Because my article is written for, and widely read by music downloaders, I think this section may be the first introduction most p2p users get to the notion that there is a legitimate reason to consider the elimination of copyright: the reason being that the ability to faithfully and cheaply copy digital information yields more benefit to society than the benefit that results from allowing the authors of digital information a monopoly to their work.
While copyright law is a cornerstone to Open Source licensing - without copyrights, licenses would be unenforceable - I think it's pretty clear especially from Richard Stallman's earlier writing that his objective is the elimination of copyright.
Consider that there are far more people who listen to music than who program, or even use computers. If they were all made to understand the benefit to society of cheap, faithful digital copying, maybe we could eliminate, or at least substantially reform copyright.
Request your free CD of my piano music.
um, Lessig is already on the EFF Board.
fwiw, you might check out the streaming archive that I've been putting together...
Here's what I do: Bitty Browser & Andromeda