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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.
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.