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Lawrence Lessig Answers Your Questions About His Mayday PAC (Video)

Posted by Roblimo on from the it's-the-next-best-thing-to-asking-him-live-and-in-person dept.

We've mentioned this interesting PAC more than once, including when Steve Wozniak endorsed it. The original Mayday PAC goal was to raise $1 million. Now Larry is working on a second -- and more ambitious -- goal: To raise $5 million by July 4. We called for your questions on June 23, and got a bunch of them. This time, instead of asking via email, we used Google Hangout to ask via video. Here's a quote from the Mayday website:'We are a crowdfunded Super PAC to end all Super PACs. Ironic? Yes. Embrace the irony. We’re kickstarting a Super PAC big enough to make it possible to win a Congress committed to fundamental reform by 2016. We set fundraising goals and then crowdfund those goals." Check the Mayday About page and you'll see that a whole bunch of Internet and coding luminaries are on board. You may also notice that they span the political spectrum; this is totally not a partisan effort. | Another quote from the website: "Wealthy funders are holding our democracy hostage. We want to pay the ransom and get it back." Is this an achievable goal? We'll never know if we don't try. | This is Part 1 of a 2-part video. (Alternate Video Link) Update: 07/02 23:42 GMT by T : Here's a link to part 2 of the video, too.

3 of 148 comments (clear)

  1. The question to me seems to be... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Interesting

    What difference does any of these efforts make if the 9-robe court thinks corporate donations and an individual's right to free speech are essentially exactly the same?

    What process defeats an over-arching fail condition like that?

    1. Re:The question to me seems to be... by RavenLrD20k · · Score: 3, Interesting

      That's the legislative check and balance to the court. If a congress can be bribed to make an amendment to the constitution that specifies that money, resources, or commodities cannot be equated to speech, then the verdict of the Supreme Court is nullified by the voices that represent the will of the people. The real trick is getting a congress in office that would agree on passing the amendment.

  2. No Thank You by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

    Written answers are higher quality than spoken. I'm not interested in watching a video. (I thought we'd already covered this? Does anyone really like videos on /. ?)