International Law

Lessig's next big thing

The Nation has a good profile of Larry Lessig:

In late March, Stanford law professor Lawrence Lessig came to DC to draw back the curtain on the second act of his career. Lessig, with his placid mien and quiet voice, does not exude the aura of a star, but over the past decade he's become one of the most influential public intellectuals of the Internet age. Along with a small group of activists, legal academics and computer geeks, Lessig has built from scratch a global grassroots movement to reform copyright and intellectual property law. Videos of his lectures are passed along like samizdat by bloggers. "The first time I ever saw him speak," says Cory Doctorow, co-editor of BoingBoing, one of the country's most popular blogs, "I remember having the doors blown off my mind." Fans line up at events with worn copies of his books to ask for everything from signatures to career advice. It is, in the estimation of Aaron Swartz, a 21-year-old programming prodigy who's worked with Lessig since 2001, "a weird kind of celebrity."

Lessig stunned his legions of fans last summer when he abruptly announced he was walking away from the cause that had defined his career. For the next ten years, he said, he would be focusing on a new problem: fighting corruption in politics. So to announce his new venture he'd come to Washington, home to what he considers the most dangerously corrupt institution in the country: the United States Congress. With his new netroots-style reform advocacy organization, Change Congress, Lessig is determined to clean it up.

To many of the Beltway denizens crowded into the over-capacity room at the National Press Club on March 20, Lessig was only a faintly familiar name. Since announcing his new career path, though, he has worked hard to raise his political profile. He endorsed and has campaigned for his onetime University of Chicago colleague Barack Obama. In February, when Congressman Tom Lantos died, Lessig toyed with the idea of running for the seat in the special election. He posted a ten-minute video explaining his platform, centered around campaign finance reform, and set up a website to accept donations. He raised more than $60,000 in just two weeks before ultimately deciding not to run. At this year's Netroots Nation (formerly YearlyKos), the annual convention of the Internet's progressive activists, he will be delivering a keynote address.

Read more here.

Full post as published by Freedom to Differ on May 30, 2008 (boomark / email).