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Lawrence Lessig to Leave Copyright Sphere
brandonY writes "The founder of Creative Commons, the Stanford lawyer behind the 'Eldred v. Ashcroft' case, and the author of 'Code' has spent the last 10 years working tirelessly on behalf of limited copyright terms, net neutrality, and the public domain. Tuesday, Lawrence Lessig announced on his blog that he has "decided to shift my academic work, and soon, my activism" from fighting the good fight for the public domain to fighting the good fight against corruption and the influence of big money's effects on legislation in general."
...because big companies can profit off it. I suggest reading Empire by Negri and Hardt. One of their points is that a lot of the separate struggles for freedom have the same enemy, namely the interests of the propertied class.
Inventions have long since reached their limit, and I see no hope for further development.-- Frontinus, 1st cent. AD
It's strange, though, because he is now tackling a problem that is much bigger and harder to solve. Rather than just get one set of laws fixed (copyright laws), he is now hoping to change all the laws that affect governance. Yet, he is undoubtedly right that without fundamental changes in the way governance occurs, any "wins" in other domains (be it copyright law, privacy, etc.) will be tenuous and short-lived.
Lessig is one of the more brilliant minds of our generation. Don't forget his efforts to bring Microsoft to task when that seemed an insurmountable obstacle. I've read some of his books and whether you agree with him or not, he as a way of attacking an issue and providing deep, insightful arguments. He's also very good at taking complex issues and distilling them down so that the average person can understand them. Don't count him out before he begins. If he manages to get some air time, he might be able to make a real difference. Either way, when one of our best minds announces his intention to take on a real issue in our society I think that's a good thing.
I think we're too far gone, at this point, to fight corruption in our government.
Ten years isn't going to be enough. In ten years' time, all of us working together would hardly even make a dent in it. Take down one corrupt politician and there's an entire party's worth to take his or her place.
We could use a new system. Perhaps if we pushed more of the decisions to the people it would become too expensive to 'buy' support? Or perhaps we could ban parties names from anything printed by/endorsed by the government? Or perhaps merely instituting a 'removal-by-popular-constituant-vote' system would do...
I do not have an answer, but repairing the current system just doesn't seem like a good use of time and effort to me.
I don't think anyone (besides the donors and the recipients, perhaps) would argue that it's not about buying influence. But while a single collective pot to fund campaigns would most likely result in fewer donations overall, I also think it has potential--with the right oversight/management, etc--to get a lot of individuals to donate. Granted, with the right oversight and management, our (US=us in this example) current processes wouldn't have as many problems either.
It's an interesting idea, I guess I'm not seeing any glaringly obvious negatives to this, from a citizen's perspective, which may answer the question of "why don't we do this already?"
When they said "share", they meant "repurchase". Sales are more important than the message, I guess. That is like forming a negative impression of Tobey Maguire because Stan Lee didn't get his cut of the Spiderman films. Gore was an actor and promoter of the film. He doesn't own it and has little say in how it was distributed.
Collect a database of all contributions and fees collected by Congresscritters. Then correlate it to each ones voting record. If the voters saw the tie in for why their Rep voted for that (insert idiotic bill) piece of crap. This could be a way to remove the incumbants. Personally I vote against all office holders in every election, it's the only chance to change things. This would also work at the state level.
Professional Politicians are not the solution, they ARE the problem.
I'll be a damn proud taxes payer when instead of spending so much on war and weapon, we'll have:
1) publicly financed and spend-capped election
1.5) free equal TV air time for all legitimate candidate: at LEAST those who also get secret service protection.
2) make election a holiday, heck, we should even spend tax $$ to get people to the polls.
Wanna fix corruption? Fix the election.
The only possible interpretation of any research whatever in the 'social sciences' is: some do, some don't
I'm someone who works in Washington, so I'm posting as a coward.
I've seen Lessig talk, read a lot of his stuff, and must say that his announcement is the most egomanical thing I've read in a while. First: Lessig doesn't know Washington at all. He couldn't pronounce Congressman Goodlate's name correctly when Goodlatte was one of the top copyright people in town. Second: activism isn't all on the net. You have to show up and lobby once in a while. Lessig was absent most of the time. Third: corruption? Lawyers and lobbyists get paid to represent interests. There were LOTS of paid guys running around DC advocating the exact same things Lessig does because they were paid to. Many corporations are fighting copyright battles and pay well to do it.
Whether you agree with Greenpeace, hate GE, or just the opposite, there are paid people in DC arguing on your behalf. They are ALL lobbyists. And that doesn't make them corrupt. And it doesn't mean they are guns used to the highest bidder either. Most believe what they advocate. Passionately.
Lessig may know copyrights, but he don't know politics.
"Freedom of speech issues. Think of the politician you most despise. Now imagine being forced to contribute to his or her campaign"
This always seems to come up.
You can always envision that your money went to the guy/gal/hermaphrodite that you
did like ( or that you hated least ). And if you cant get past that, then what
about the other guys "free speech"? Or is money and economic backing going to
continue to be the main input?
And I would propose that there be no "private route", as it seems that when private
party "X" donates money, they expect influence with the candidates.
And as long as the bizarre conditions apply to everyone, who cares?
I would say that the money never goes to the candidate, they request something be
done with there allotment, and the money is transfered from the pool to the
publication directly. And if you offer candidate 1 space in your publication at a
given price, you *have* to offer that price to everyone. And the items must be
printed together, no putting your favorite on page 1, and the one you dont like
on page 2.
Why is this so hard? There is no real speech issue here, except that the "small guy" is
not heard from. Or do you like that GE has more say over how our "republican government
with democratic traditions" is run?
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