February 15, 2008
Lawrence Lessig for Congress?
Technology blogs are abuzz today about the possibility of Lawrence Lessig, a Stanford University law professor, running for the seat in the U.S. House of Representatives previously held by Rep. Tom Lantos, a California Democrat who died this week. Mr. Lessig is well regarded by many legal and cyberspace scholars for his writings and speeches advocating that the U.S. legal system change to support the sharing of ideas and cultural and scientific works.
Jonathan Zittrain, a professor of Internet governance and regulation at the University of Oxford, notes on his blog today that Mr. Lessig has registered the domain name Change-Congress.com. A blog called Draft Lessig has emerged. And Jonathan Palfrey Jr., a law professor at Harvard University, has set up a “Draft Lessig for Congress” group on Facebook, the social-networking site. The special election for Mr. Lantos’s seat is April 8.—Andrea Foster
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Visit http://www.myspace.com/lawrencelessig and join our movement to draft Professor Lessig!
— Draft Lessig! Feb 17, 04:23 PM #
The most important thing Prof. Lessig could do would be to prevent Congress from extending Copyright when 2018 comes around. In fact, I hope he could spearhead a moratorium on copyright extensions for at least 50 years.
At the very least, he should help Congress balance the public’s needs with those corporations who pay Congress to extend copyright restrictions.
— Bob Kosovsky Feb 20, 10:19 AM #