Lawrence Lessig
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'''Lawrence Lessig''' (born June 3, 1961) is an US|American academic. He is currently professor of law at Stanford Law School and founder of its Center for Internet and Society at Stanford|Center for Internet and Society.
Prior to joining Stanford he taught at the Harvard Law School, where he was a faculty director of the Berkman Center for Internet & Society, and the University of Chicago Law School. Lessig is considered a liberal, but he clerked for two influential conservative judges: Richard Posner and Justice Antonin Scalia. Lessig was educated in business and economics under the Wharton School of Business|Wharton undergraduate program at the University of Pennsylvania, before going on to attain a second undergraduate degree in philosophy from Trinity College, Cambridge, and then a J.D. from Yale University|Yale Law School.
Lessig has emphasized in interviews that his philosophy experience at Cambridge radically changed his values and career path. Prior to this, he held strong conservative political views, desired a career in business, was a highly active Teen Age Republican, and almost pursued a Republican Party (United States)|Republican political career. A year abroad at Cambridge convinced him to undertake a second undergraduate degree in philosophy there, and he was converted to liberal political values. During this time, he also travelled in the Eastern Bloc, so acquiring a lifelong interest in Eastern European politics.
In 2002, Lessig was awarded the FSF Award for the Advancement of Free Software from the Free Software Foundation (FSF), and on March 28 2004 he was elected to the FSF's Board of Directors http://www.fsf.org/about/leadership.html Lessig is also a well-known critic of copyright term extensions.
He proposed the concept of "Free Culture" http://randomfoo.net/oscon/2002/lessig/ He also supports free software and open spectrum http://cyberlaw.stanford.edu/spectrum/ He is founder and chairman of the Creative Commons and a board member of the Electronic Frontier Foundation.
At his "Free culture" keynote at OSCON 2002, half of his speech was also about software patents, which he views as a rising threat to both open source and innovation.
Lessig is on the board of directors of Software Freedom Law Center, launched in February 2005.
Lessig appears as a character in a 2005 episode of the television political drama ''The West Wing (television)|The West Wing'' ("The Wake Up Call", season 6, episode 14), played by Christopher Lloyd. Although portrayed by Lloyd, Lessig's character in the episode is intended to be the same as in real-life; the episode cited his 2002 book ''The Future of Ideas'' and his expertise in Eastern European constitutional law. The episode's screenwriter was Josh Singer, himself one of Lessig's former students, and his appearance in the show (where the character of Lessig assists the drafters of a Belarusian constitution), is loosely based on Lessig's involvement with work on the Georgia (country)|Georgian constitution. (http://www.lessig.org/blog/archives/002421.shtml
In May 2005, http://www.newyorkmetro.com/nymetro/news/features/12061/index.htmlthat Lessig had been a victim of sexual abuse by adult staff members at the American Boychoir School which he had attended as a teenager. Lessig reached a settlement with the school in the past, under confidential terms. However, he has represented another student victim, John Hardwicke, in court, and has written about it in his http://www.lessig.org/blog/archives/002912.shtml
Notable cases
Eldred v. Ashcroft (representing plaintiff Eric Eldred)
Kahle v. Ashcroft - see Brewster Kahle and http://cyberlaw.stanford.edu/about/cases/kahle_v_ashcroft.shtml#002043 Golan v. Ashcroft - see http://cyberlaw.stanford.edu/about/cases/golan_v_ashcroft.shtml United States v. Microsoft (special master and author of an amicus brief addressing the Sherman Acthttp://www.lessig.org/content/testimony/ab/ab.pdf
DeCSS|MPAA v. 2600 (submitted an amicus brief with Yochai Benkler in support of 2600 http://www.lessig.org/content/testimony/dvd/dvd.pdf
Books authored
''Code and Other Laws of Cyberspace'' (2000)
''The Future of Ideas'' (2001)
''Free Culture'' (2004). Lessig released this work under the Creative Commons License: Attribution-NonCommercial. See http://free-culture.org/freecontent/
External links
http://www.lessig.org/ http://www.supremecourtus.gov/oral_arguments/argument_transcripts/01-618.pdfand http://www.supremecourtus.gov/opinions/02pdf/01-618.pdf http://www.gnu.org/award/2002/2002.htmlhttp://www.wired.com/wired/archive/10.10/lessig.html?pg=5 http://wiki.ael.be/index.php/LawrenceLessigare on his wiki.ael.be page
http://codebook.jot.com/WikiHome a wiki started by Lessig to allow the internet community to help him revise and update his seminal book, Code.
Columns
http://www.legalaffairs.org/issues/March-April-2004/story_lessig_marapr04.html- Lessig's account of why the Eldred v. Ashcroft case went to Ashcroft
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/12.03/lessig_pr.htmlInterviews
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/10.10/lessig_pr.html http://www.foreignpolicy.com/story/cms.php?story_id=3306&print=1 Foreign Policy, November 2005
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=01/12/21/155221 http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/a/policy/2005/02/24/lessig.html O'Reilly Network, 2005-2-24
Audio/Video
http://lessig.org/freeculture/from OSCON 2002 (including an audio and flash with the presentation as well as the presentation itself)
http://wilcoworld.net/wired/- Jeff Tweedy and Lawrence Lessig in conversation with Steven Johnson
http://www.itconversations.com/shows/detail497.htmlfrom OSCON 2005 (with comments, audio and presentation)
http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/lydon/2003/12/18#a455Audio interview.
http://www.radiophiles.orghttp://www.google.com/custom?hl=en&lr=&ie=ISO-8859-1&safe=off&c2coff=1&cof=AWFID%3A8c645efc7e9cde37%3BL%3Ahttp%3A%2F%2Fwww.itconversations.com%2Fassets%2Fgifs%2FitcLogo.gif%3BLH%3A67%3BLW%3A423%3BBGC%3A%23FFFFFF%3BT%3A%23000059%3BLC%3A%230000ff%3BVLC%3A%230000ff%3BALC%3A%230000ff%3BGALT%3A%23008000%3BGFNT%3A%23000059%3BGIMP%3A%23000059%3BDIV%3A%230000ff%3BLBGC%3A%23FFFFFF%3BAH%3Aleft%3BS%3Ahttp%3A%2F%2Fwww.itconversations.com%3B&domains=itconversations.com&q=lawrence+lessig&btnG=Search&sitesearch=itconversations.com- Audio programs featuring Lessig
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-7533767252727349960&q=twiton This Week in Tech
http://www.digitalvillage.org/audio.html December 3, 2005
http://www.digitalvillage.org/audio/dv05120301.mp3(mp3)
http://www.digitalvillage.org/audio/dv05120302.mp3(mp3)
http://thisweekintech.com/tri1 December 5, 2005. Topic: Google Books
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