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Wikipedia Founder Jimmy Wales Is Now Chairing Lessig's Presidential Bid
Funksaw sends a followup to Tuesday's news that Lawrence Lessig is pondering a presidential campaign: Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales is now chairing the committee for Lessig's campaign. Wales said, "Larry's run for President is different. He's crowdfunding his campaign instead of seeking out rich donors. He's showing people that we can change the rigged political system. ... The Internet community came together to fight back against SOPA and we were successful. Now we’re behind Lessig to fight for citizen equality." Lessig's goal is to raise a million dollars by September 7, and they're already at roughly $300,000. Relatedly, Newsweek had a brief interview with Lessig over his potential campaign, and Eric Posner wrote an insightful piece about it at Slate.
Nice of them to split the left vote.
headline says it all
Jimbo needs to fix Wikipedia first by grtting rid of abusive admins and deletionists.
Any candidate that has a poll on their "plan" page that even entertains the notion of Jon Stewart and Neil Degrasse Tyson for VP has already convinced me to stop listening.
It's the Campaign Platform Anyone can Edit!
... they aren't going to win. They are wasting time and resources trying to fix the government when the public is so stupid and easily manipulated. They don't know what science has discovered about the human brain, you should all watch the below:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PYmi0DLzBdQ
Something about censoring certain methods of political campaigning? I can't quite remember how it goes...
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
uh oh, reddit is leaking...
Just as long as they don't stick a google ad there too.
If I'm going to support a candidate for the job of POTUS I expect them to get elected and then do the f***ing job for at least four years.
If he says he will be a one term president up front I then applaud him for that. But getting elected so he can resign makes no sense.
Go back to academia where you can play what if. We need a real POTUS committed to the job of running the country.
... "crowd funding" in politics is ancient. And I'd point out that most crowdfunding systems have no problem with rich donors. Go to kickstarter... scroll down... they've got prizes for people that give 10k. Generally involves people going to some stupid party with the developer or them inserting you into their work or something.
There's nothing new about Larry's campaign. Guy that founded Wikipedia likes him? Okay... that's interesting sort of... but the crowdfunding argument? I'm not such a low information voter that that doesn't pass the smell test.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
If he has only one bill he wants to pass, and then resign, that doesn't seem like much of a vision to me. The country can't be "fixed" by changing one law. I'd rather elect somebody who has a vision with a bit more scope.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Better yet, they can form a political party made up of all the biggest Internet personalities. Of course, with how uncivil the Internet is, it'd certainly be dysfunctional. Therefore, they should call it the Lemon Party.
Wikipedia pages are rarely balanced, I noticed. Now, I understand why.
I'm going to invent this great thing... but this guy with the beard and dedication will fix all the bugs for you. Sounds like Jobs and W all over again.
...that contributors will have their contributions blocked or reversed at the behest of vindictive campaign insiders without explanation or appeal in order to stroke the insiders' petty egos?
Lawrence Person (lawrencepersonh@gmailh.com (remove all "h"s to mail)
http://www.lawrenceperson.com/
Why is /. giving this guy so much news space? Isn't this place news for nerds? Something has to be going on in the STEM world. Sure he created CC and some CS law stuff.
If an SJW isn't in your face being annoying and stupid they aren't a true SJW
Jeez, this is like reading Xinhua News. Just a collective ignoring of the fact that all these people are on the far left of politics, and instead pretending that "the internet community" is some sort of monolithic bloc that supports this. SOPA wasn't a divisive issue, it was something everyone could get behind. But come on, simply presenting statements like "Now we're behind Lessig to fight for citizen equality" with no context? Look at how it assumes the sale and doesn't give anyone the chance to raise objections. If you're not for these hard-leftists, you must be against citizen equality. Man, I feel really despicable being against citizen equality.
If you read a lot of Xinhua like I do, this is a common occurrence. They will simply ignore important context and call everyone to action. The obvious questions that everyone sitting at home is asking? Unanswered. In Xinhua's defense, they regularly receive instructions from the Communist Party instructing them to leave important information out of their stories. Western journalists are under no such oppressive restrictions and deliberately do such things of their own free will. Which system is worse?
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
Lessig wants Proportional Representation via his Citizen Equality Act and ranked choice voting system.
If he manages to achieve that for the USA then it will be a huge historical leap forward.
It will mean the introduction of democracy to the USA - long overdue.
work in progress
They want to elect a 'reform' president who will serve only long enough to turn it over to a "biz-as-usual" VP from their same party and who were pigs sucking at the public swill they now seek to reform, just like the other party. Delusional idiots. Usefull idiots to the demokrats perhaps.
I nominate Bennet Hasselton for president. He's the president we deserve, but not the one we need. Imagine the 400 page state of the union address he would write every year.
"INSERT NAME HERE"'s run for President is different".
No. He's a politician. The only difference is the tie or the shoes. Or both.
Lessig 1.0 believed in freedom of information. Lessig 2.0 believes in one half of the two party system, and also that the government that currently screws us will save us.
Why is /. giving this guy so much news space? Isn't this place news for nerds? Something has to be going on in the STEM world.
I'm probably feeding the troll here ( in the classic sense). But Larry Lessig is an absolute giant in the STEM world.
Pretty much everything we do in the STEM world is shaped by "intellectual property" law. Not so long ago Larry Lessig threw his heart and soul into trying to get some sanity back into copyright law - ending perpetual extensions of copyright and returning copyright to it's original purpose of giving people the incentive to create things that would then enter the public domain within a reasonable time frame.
Unfortunately, Larry lost that fight - essentially the corporations like Disney won. Not so long ago, Kings owned all the land and were able to use that ownership to exploit pretty much everyone else (i.e. the ordinary people / peasants). But now it's not the land that's valuable, it's the ideas - the "intellectual property" that's valuable.
Back in the day there were plenty of peasants who believed in the divine right of kings - that the more powerful a king was and the more he used his power to enrich himself the better. These days there are plenty of people who believe that CEOs should have even more power (e.g. less government restrictions of their treatment of the ordinary people working in their corporations) and that CEOs should be paid even more.
So, you may agree with Larry Lessig or you may not, but if ever there was a presidential candidate who was focused on issues that are relevant to "nerds" - well, that would be Larry Lessig. There's a good chance you were trolling and I got all wound up and took the bait - but if you really don't know why a run by Larry Lessig would be news for nerds then you don't deserve to call yourself a nerd.
Obama wanted to change the game, when he came into office he got told what the game and the stakes were, and now he is of a different conviction and has agreed to play the game, as can be seen from him adopting the politics he campaigned against. Why do you think Lessig, or anyone else, would be different?
There is no chance of democracy in America under the current system. Corruption is effectively legal, and the whole system is corrupt. I can't think of a worse political system in any country on earth.
One of Wikipedia's primary goals is that its articles have a neutral point of view. Jimmy Wales is the co-founder of Wikipedia and a board member of the Wikimedia Foundation. The latter is responsible for raising money for Wikipedia. Generally speaking, candidates for political office resign their positions as commentators for news networks so there's not a conflict of interest. That conflict of interest would exist both for the candidate and the network. The candidate would influence his or her own campaign by providing political commentary, which is a conflict of interest. The network also would have a conflict of interest because they couldn't report fairly on the campaign of one or their commentators or any competing candidates in that race. Commentators don't maintain a neutral point of view, but it's still a conflict of interest that is best for all parties to avoid. While it's not precisely the same situation, it seems like a conflict of interest for the Wikimedia Foundation. They raise funds for a number of sites including Wikipedia and Wikinews, both of which attempt to maintain a neutral point of view in their articles. It's a conflict of interest for the Wikimedia Foundation when the sites they fund expect to maintain a neutral point of view but one of their board members is actively involved with a political campaign. I question whether they would deserve to maintain their status as a tax exempt organization in that situation.
Lessig is a fanatic by Churchill's definition: he can't change his mind and won't change the subject. That alone makes him unfit to be President. That he's a raving left-wing kook is just icing on the cake.
Disinfect the GNU General Public Virus!
Trump is selling low taxes, greatness deserved by lethargic individuals for simply having been squeezed from a vagina in such a manor as to qualify for US citizenship, and of course hate and fear.
Lets be honest, wasting time and money to beat Trump is futile. You simply can't prevail over stupid.
Oh... I feel with absolute certainty that Trump is the optimal representative of the vast majority of the American people. I will actually register to vote for the first time and vote for him. I hate his guts, I believe he's dangerous, I dread everything about him... but I believe he is very likely the huge kick in the ass America needs to finally understand that America needs an overhaul.
Oh... I also like GWB quite a bit and think he deserves either Jeb or Trump to win so he won't be considered the worst president since LBJ
The real problem is the USA's voting system is so broken that the only thing such a candidature can achieve is giving the GOP a chance. And I'm saying this as someone (not a US citizen) who has deep respect for Lessig's views.
There's nothing like $HOME
Ron could raise a million dollars in a weekend, and he did it 25.00 to 50.00 at a time. That's called real grass roots.
Doctors destroy health, lawyers destroy justice, universities destroy knowledge, religion destroys spirituality
I spent the past two years pointing out that if you're trying to convince someone you're nonpartisan, you shouldn't name your PAC after a communist holiday. Or rail against how money from big corporations is distorting the political system because they give most of their money to one side. (In practice, big business needs to be friends with whoever's in power, so they give money to both sides roughly evenly.) Or rail against money from big corporations, while other big special interest money (i.e. from labor unions), which is actually donated one-sidedly.
Now that he's running for the Democratic Party's nomination... NOW can we agree that he's a leftist and his PAC was leftist?
In order for America to break the two party mess it has split into, it will be necessary for people, liberal and conservative to 'give up' a few elections in order to get their candidates onto the ballots for at least two elections so they can recieve federal campaign funding and mindshare necessary to make their 2nd or 3rd presidential bid a success.
But everybody liberal or conservative prefers to tell you that is silly or insane and sticks to their small pictures rather than looking at the changes and sacrifices that have to be made to ensure the system will change, even if it is not TODAY.
In theory I like proportional representation. In practice every European country with PR seems to have at least one ridiculous/evil/nationalist party run by someone suspiciously similar to Donald Trump, which always seem to make the threshold. For awhile the Law of Jante seemed to protect the Scandinavian states and Germans from this, but the last Swedish elections resulted in a minority government that almost fell due to the Moderate's ignoring the Law of Jante and supporting some ridiculous brinksmanship from the Sweden Democrats.
So it's kinda a trade-off. In the first-past-the-post system minor, relatively unpopular movements, all have to co-opt themselves into a larger movement or be irrelevant. The advantage here is that they don't get office unless they have mainstream allies, which means they have to be somewhat reasonable. Unlike Sweden Democrats, the Finns Party, or a half-dozen other European movements. The disadvantage is that sometimes the local definition of "reasonable" is wrong and somebody (ie: the US Greens) should have more power then they get.
In the US, of course, we have the added complication of Separation of Powers, whereby the larger movements can really fuck up the system without taking much responsibility; so they tend to court smaller movements by brinksmanship.
If you give any money to them you will be put on a watchlist, lose your job and your home, and your loved ones will suffer the consequences of your folly.
Please read:
A personal appeal from Jimmy Wales.
Please give our campaign some money or else we'll use your Wikipedia donations (aka my money) instead.
Soul-piercing eyes banner
Fighting against 'Disney' has little at all to do with the kind of intellectual property reform that is needed. Nerds don't care that much about mainstream Hollywood shit. I wish we could get over the idea that people making copies of commercial entertainment content, which for the most part has ONLY entertainment value, is a bold move for greater communication.
Greater communication was things like open USENET threads that people could communicate through (yes, before the majority of the people 'using' USENET were using it to shuttle around binary attachments- again, more Hollywood shit). Peer-based actual communication means not sending 10,000 different copies of a Brittany Spears song this way and that. That shit has clogged up the net and actually impedes relevant communication.
Lessig is a law-type. Yes there are law nerds just as there are astronomy nerds and vintage chainsaw nerds. The fact that he champions the flavor of intellectual property law reform that would free up the Disney vaults for more, freer shuffling around of those bits takes away from his relevance here on Slashdot. Really, it does.
I'm as intrigued as the next nerd with the intellectual challenge remove copy protection and mass-producing all the mainstream content as the rest of us nerds. But like the rest of nerddom, my interest in said content evaporates as soon as it's time to actually view or listen to said content.
The trouble with trying to keep money out of politics is that money is very powerful so has a strong motivation to find its way around whatever obstructions you put up. So the fix isn't to put up stronger gates, it's to reduce the incentive by making that money less powerful.
Donors dominate because individual legislators have a lot of autonomy and are easy to push around. But if you take away the legislator's autonomy by strictly enforcing party discipline then they're a much less tempting target and they have less liability for "you voted for X" style ads.
Make it into a Parliamentary systems where the house leaders aren't just wrangling cats, they're actually telling their members how to vote on important issues. Sure it sounds authoritarian but it's a lot more accountable because when a bill passes (or doesn't) everybody knows who to hold accountable.
You don't even need to change the constitution, it's just a change in the legislative traditions.
I stole this Sig
Donations to Wikimedia Foundation are tax deductible. Donations to a political action committee are not. So if Jimbo wants to use Wikimedia's donation drives for politics, it's going to have to make a separate entity to receive political dollars. It's the same reason that NORML is two different companies.
Anyone see the hypocrisy of a politician who wants to restore an elective democratic government, so that it can champion gun-control laws and climate remediation, hiring an avowed anti-government, pro-gun Libertarian to rattle the cup for the politician? There will certainly be thousands of nitwits duped into giving money to this campaign, but the majority of observers will see it for what it is -- a fundraising drive for the personal aggrandizement of Lessig and Wales, which is *disguised* as a political movement.