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Lessig For Congress?
luge writes "With the unfortunate passing of Congressman Tom Lantos, parts of Silicon Valley and San Francisco will be holding a special election in June to send a replacement to Congress. Given the area, it would be great to have someone who is both tech- and policy-aware fill the seat — and it looks like that just might happen. Lawrence Lessig has apparently bought 'change-congress.com.' A 'Draft Lessig' group is forming on Facebook, featuring some of Lessig's old co-workers at Harvard and Jimmy Wales, among others. No word from Lessig himself yet, but he's been increasingly vocal about politics of late. If it happens, it would be a huge step forward for the representation of technology in Washington."
I doubt he'd be electable in a state which contains a large percentage (if not the largest) of content providers.
Or maybe Perens? Nah, he's not wingnutty enough for politics.
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If only for what he, himself says is the greatest failure of his career. Interestingly, it isn't covered in the Wikipedia article about Lessig. But you can blame his lack of skill on the rediculously long copyright terms the music labels enjoy, as the SCOTUS said that "limited" means whatever Congress says it means.
I hope I'm not trashing the wrong lawyer...
mcgrew's razor: Never attribute to stupidity that which can be explained by greedy self-interest
IIRC, Lessig recently made anti-corruption be his struggle, rather than restoring copyright to something reasonable. On which goal(s) would he focus? I think legislators are often forced to sacrifice one ideal for another during the legislative process.
How about Scott McNealy?
and board member at EFF apparently.
I'd never heard of him. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawrence_Lessig
The story poster has obviously been living in a spider-hole for the last several years.
The legislative and judicial branches have been merged in the executive branch (a.k.a President-VICE
Richard B. Cheney ) .
I hope this helps the arrest; trial; conviction and sentencing of these WAR CRIMINALS.
PatRIOTically,
K. Trout
He doesn't sound like the most ideal candidate, but then what politician ever is?
+1 IDisagreeSoHeMustBeATrollOrAnAstroturferOrAShill
I'm leaning toward Obama a bit for President. This is mostly because when he drafted his tech policy, instead of talking to some exec at AT&T, he talked to Lessig[1]. I find this admirable.
In the potential future where Lessig runs and wins, and Obama wins, we'd have two more Slashdot Moral Values-friendly politicians in office. Of course, there's already people like Dick Boucher of Virginia.
[1] Of course, who knows how committed Obama is to his tech platform, and/or how much he'd have to compromise to appease the Congresscritters who've been bought by the telecom and copyright cartels.
FEC.gov shows he donated the maximum allowance to Barack Obama's campaign. Just FYI :) .
Let me preface this comment by saying I am not an American, but an observer of American politics and culture. It is a sad testament to the strength of anti-intellectualist tendencies in American culture that American politicians tend to have little academic expertise on the issues pertaining to the policies they espouse (e.g. Ted Stevens' "internet = series of tubes"). The benefit provided by academic expertise is not simply the number of degrees one acquires, but dialogical engagement with other experts who dedicate themselves to finding fault in arguments (via journals, conferences, etc). Thus, the arguments presented by an academic to the general public may well be bastardized (because simplified) versions of the arguments they would present within academia, but we (the public) can assure ourselves that those arguments could be elucidated in ways that stand up to some level of harsh criticism. To put one's faith in the honesty of a politician whose views and arguments arose in an academic setting, then, is a better bet than putting one's faith in the honesty of a politician who may only be concerned with rhetorically covering up his/her true influences (e.g. pressure by lobbyists or campaign contributions). Lessig for congress is, in my eyes, a good move regardless of how much/little I may agree with him politically. This is simply because the development of his views and arguments is well documented in his books and articles, and with reference to an academic context which is accessible to anyone interested in putting the time into investigating it. As I see it, this would be a move towards transparency in government, which is a prerequisite for true democracy.
Trust me, kids; don't drink and post.
My take on his recent switch in area of concentration was that he realized that we can't improve copyright until we take care of corruption.
"The ferrets, they're every where I tell you!"
Is there any way to elect him and then have him avoid the mandatory lobotomy that is forced on all our politicians? :)
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He would make an excellent Congressman and technology advocate. Personally, I think Lawrence Lessig would make for the right template to choose Congressmen. That is, they both have general competence and area-specific knowledge. Rather than the old method of electing political cronies or party insiders or business schmucks or mercenary, power-hungry lawyers, we could elect men and women who are strong contributors to our civic life and also experts in their particular field.
For instance, I would feel much better about food safety legislation designed by a Congresswoman who was an actual FDA scientist. Then I could be reasonably sure that facts played a large role in her decisions.
Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.
Lessig, assuming he runs and is elected as a Democrat, would provide a massive counterweight to the Republican's Adam Putnam (R-FL) on technology issues, not to mention any other current Reps living off the largesse of the intellectual propery community (RIAA, MPAA, Business Software Alliance, etc.).
I hope he runs. We need more legislators with practical life experiences who are not only experts in particular disciplines, but know enough about legal or scientific methods to form intelligent opinion based on facts on other subjects instead of voting the way the polls or campaign contributors tell them to.
TLR
A man no more knows his destiny than a tea leaf knows the history of the East India Company
In the event that he says yes, and actually gets elected to Congress, is this where Technocracy begins in the US?
/.
A Representative expires during the end of the first decade of the information and technological explosion. And luckily, being from a location whose constituency houses one of, if not THE Tech Sectors breeding grounds and homebases.
It also just so happens that the possible replacement for the now available seat is a vocal and active critic of fair, and just policy surrounding technology, copyright, and its place in society?
I can only hope in 50 years someone might write a book about how it all started. And a lead reference will be hopefully be how much press this garnered off of
He wasn't that into the whole FOSS scene. His replacement seems to be much better attuned to the finer points of freedom.
Well.. maybe. Or Maybe not. But Definitely not sort of.
I had a little correspondence with Mr. Lessig before and was impressed. He seems to be a person who actively is seeking the truth of matters in our society. I would vote for him without doubt.
I don't live in his district, but I sent a check to Diebold and they said they registered my vote.
A large part of the problem with corruption is the red tape that the corrupt can hide behind. What we need is a sort of "root" user for one or two agencies that can essentially violate any law or policy inside the government, short of the constitution itself, to root out corruption. I'd suggest greatly expanding the size and scope of the Offices of the Inspector General, such that when an IG agent steps foot inside of a federal agency, they are more terrifying that Tomas De Torquemada to those with something to hide.
When the agents of the IG get probable cause to investigate, I'd suggest that they have the following police powers internal to the federal government, that go well above and beyond anything regular police can do:
1) An IG agent, in their federal department, has automatic root access to all compartmentalized information.
2) No federal employee can refuse to speak with an IG agent. Refusal to do so is grounds to be blacklisted from ever working for the federal government or on a government contract.
3) Each director of an Inspector General's office is appointed for at least 3 presidential elections, and cannot be removed except by impeachment.
4) The IG is in no way legally accountable to the President, and can willfully disobey even legal orders from the President.
5) Refusal to give an IG agent satisfactory answers to any question is automatic criminal guilt of obstruction of justice.
Lets face it. He'd fit in a lot better in the Judicial Branch...
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Palo Alto (and Stanford) are in California's 14th District, and Lantos is from the 12th District, representing the area from San Mateo, and Redwood City north to South San Francisco, Daly City, and the southwestern portion of San Francisco. I don't think he's eligible to represent the 12th district without moving. So this would be no small matter for him to undertake.
That said, I would fully support Lessig for congress. Hopefully he can bring some knowledge and sanity to important committees.
-molo
Using your sig line to advertise for friends is lame.
In the potential future where Lessig runs and wins, and Obama wins, we'd have two more Slashdot Moral Values-friendly politicians in office.
Wow.
Oxymoron-O-Meter just pinned Eleven.
Not to mention the "Hive Mind Group Think" litmus test, which just burst into flames.
Listen, if you think everyone at slashdot (or everyone in the Tech Industry) is an Obama/Lessig fan, you've got too many people on your ignore list.
You'll probably get a pass here on slashdot, but I recommend you not try this again on a forum where the majority of members are old enough to vote.
Best case scenario, he'd be on out of 435 in Congress...better than nothing, but still...
J
Beer, now there's a temporary solution -- Homer Jay S.
I think L Lessig can have more impact from outside Congress, and concentrate on issues he cares about (copyright before, corruption now), rather than waste his time politicking about in Congress on issues he doesn't care about.
Sure, maybe he could have a little more impact working from the inside, but I'm cynically afraid that he'd soon be disgusted and burnt out against the rot in there.
Misleading titles? Inflammatory blurbs? Keep in mind that Slashdot is a tabloid.
You're kidding, right?
They have a *lot* of leverage to use for bribes. "Say, you want all the top-40 crap exclusively on MS-Windows Live? That's easy. Just make sure all equipment must have DRM built-in."
It's already happening. That's why Microsoft is so willing to add end-to-end DRM to MS-Windows.
I know you are just making a joke, but the joke's on us. Gates already has more influence via Microsoft than all the government regulation in the computer industry combined.
Microsoft is to software what Budweiser is to beer.
He argued against infinite copyright in front of the supreme court, against BigMedia's interest.
Jimmy Wales is supporting him. Not exactly a shining example of truth and justice. Is Lessig a fan of Ayn Rand too?
I'm sure his wikipedia page will be carefully protected by a very efficient cabal though.
... on Courts, the Internet and Intellectual Property on account of this unfortunate event. See this article. Getting him off and getting Lessing on this committee, even as a junior Congressman could have a huge effect in getting good legislation to the floor of Congress that is currently blocked.
Sounds like an Imperial Auditor to me...
We definitely need some people with this kind of mandate and power, provided there are enough checks on said power to prevent it being used for Evil instead of Good...
Dan Aris
Fun. Free. Online. RPG. BattleMaster.
There will be too many votes against him from Steamboat Willie ^h^h^h^h^h^h^hMikey Mouse.
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I was just thinking that what Congress really needs is another lawyer.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
Lessig has no chance in Lantos' district. He would not be the Democratic nominee, that would most likely be Jackie Speier, and she is a lock to win the seat. She will win by at least 60%.
Lessig will have a better chance if he tries for Anna Eshoo's seat when she retires, but he would have a lot of work to do to win a Democratic nomination out of the blue. In this area, there is a very active and strong Democratic party infrastructure and the path to that seat is usually via the state assembly/senate or San Mateo County Board of Supervisors.
If Lessig really wants in to congress, he should run for local office first.
Congratulations. You've invented a new power broker! How long do you think it would take for the position to get politicized? Think about it. You would could ask anyone anything and they have to answer. You could gain access to political plans. Leak info at inconvenient times. Get phone records for calls to non-spouses. Make it look like someone isn't being completely honest and you've effectively kicked them out of federal government and politics. Not that any of this is bad because no-one should have anything to hide. And of course we can count on the IG not to be corrupt. It's just everyone else in Washington who is corrupt. Boy, I bet McCarthy would have loved this job.
Nobody expects the OFFICES OF THE INSPECTOR GENERAL! Our chief weapon is root access. Root access and non-possibility of non-cooperation... Our TWO chief weapons are root access, non-possibility of non-cooperation, and 12-year terms THREE! Our three main weapons are root access, non-possibility of non-cooperation, 12-year terms, and no accountability... Our four... Among our chief weaponry are such diverse elements as root access, non-possibility of non-cooperation, 12-year terms, no accountability to the executive, and automatic criminal guilt of obstruction.. of.. justice... I'll come in again.
SIGSEGV caught, terminating
wait... not that kind of sig.
And I'm not even being pedantic here. The 12th district is on the northern part of the peninsula.
:)
Congressman Mike Honda is the representative for most of "Silicon Valley" which includes San Jose, Santa Clara, and Cupertino -- the 15th District.
Now, if you want to cover Google and Stanford, then that's the 14th District -- which includes Saratoga, Sunnyvale, Mountain View, Palo Alto, and Redwood City -- and Congresswoman Anna Eshoo is very much alive.
Silicon Valley is well represented already.
6) hope like hell that you've hired someone absolutely un-corruptible, with a perfect moral compass.....
---
"I can't complain, but sometimes still do..." Joe Walsh
I completely agree that Congress would not be an environment in which Lessig would thrive. I am very interested in seeing what develops from his work on corruption. That work would grind to a halt if he had to take part in the system itself.
I would love to know that Lessig has the ear of multiple people in government. I would even re-evaluate my "please don't go, Lawrence" position if he were offered a cabinet position by someone like Obama...say the first Secretary of Government Transparency. I hope Lessig weighs in on who can best represent the Bay Area, I also hope he doesn't decide it is him.
Someone stopped blogging and actually went and tried to do something in the real world. Holy crap. Now if the other 6.5 billion other really pissed off people get off their asses and vote for him and people like him, maybe something will happen in the real world. Kick some ass Lawrence... kick some ass.
- Adam L. Beberg - The Cosm Project - http://www.mithral.com/
Didn't the FBI use something very similar to this to go after Al Capone. They called it The Untouchables. It was led by a guy named Eliot Ness . He was pretty successfull.
There ARE honest people in Goverment. Find them, give them the authority, and turn them loose.
The mistakes of a clever man are equal to the mistakes of a thousand fools.
I wonder what these "Slashdot Moral Values" are exactly.
Thinking about what I read in the last few years, very few are obvious: open source good/closed bad, Abusive copyrights bad (but I'm sure there is a very wide range of views on where "abusive" starts). There is not much else, is there? Well truisms like Science good/Ideology bad?
Ideology? I have a read a lot of "socialism = stalinist USSR = bad" and "capitalism = freedom = good" around here. Which seemed very ideological.
What are the values shared among
Congress is frighteningly clueless about many of the issues combining technology, law, and culture that face them today. I can't think of any one man who could better fill this vacuum.
Learn about Lessig's ideas, and his very effective style of presenting them, by watching a talk he gave at the TED conference in March 2007: How creativity is being strangled by the law.
----
Speak.to is about communication.
I believe that the voters there would prefer to dig up Karl Marx and put him in office.
The Constitution only requires that you live in the same state that the House district's in. (Verify here.)
Now this can be a problem if the opponent does live in the district and makes a big deal out of it (i.e. "I've lived in California's 25th all my life...my opponent only visits for good sushi") but the usefulness of that depends on how different the districts might be or how far away district lines are.
If someone gets elected to represent a district they don't live in, they typically go through the routine of pretending they live there. But even that's optional.
This is old news. We've been talking about it for a while.
Dept of Witch Hunts.
"Nothing in education is so astonishing as the amount of ignorance it accumulates in the form of inert facts." - Henry A
larry Lessig lives in the 12th Congressional district. Until he died on Feb 11th, the congressman was Tom Lantos. Mr. Lantos is an extraordinary figure. I would say this is an appropriate vacancy suitable for a man who has performed distinguished advocacy for human rights and the intellectual commons over the encroachment of purely commercial business interests.
I agree, Larry Lessig would be a good candidate for this seat in Congress. If Davey Crockett wasn't copyright Disney corporation I'd say, lets adapt the tune and lyrics from the Davey Crockett Goes to Congress story for Larry Lessig.
Here are some of the organizations and companies that are in this district, I guess:
The district covers roughly the western half of San Francisco and the inland bay half of the San Francisco peninsula down to Redwood City. The district doesn't reach Stanford but it contains San Francisco State and Notre Dame de Nameur. Companies within the district include Oracle and some players in the secure mail and security businesses including Strongmail and Qualys (they host a LUG I attend). There are also a bunch of south of Market street web enterprises in the district ( I see them advertising on Craigslist ) and Youtube is in the district I think.
http://www.sen.ca.gov/ftp/sen/cngplan/PDF_CD_ATLAS/cd12_new.pdf
To my great disappointment, I am outside of his district by about 1000 yards. Darn.
The other part of aptness is the times. Tom Lantos is the only Holocaust survivor to serve in Congress.
A different kind of appropriation of the spirit and ideas of our times and society is now taking place. Copyright has been warped into a theft of the commons. The forces for commercial copyright are aggressively removing from the public commons for a term of years longer than our lifetimes virtually all telecast sporting events, concert content, movies, textbooks, most published scientific journals, home videos made of concerts and sporting events, and everything published in a newspaper.
Mr. Lessig took a case to the Supreme Court over this misappropriation due to copyright. The answer of the Supreme Court was: It is exclusively Congress that establishes the term and law of copyright. So the point is: go to Congress and change it. Yes, Lessig for Congress. Right time, right guy.
Visit http://www.myspace.com/lawrencelessig and join our movement to draft Professor Lessig!