Free Culture

Lawrence Lessig (born June 3 1961) is an American academic and political activist. He is a professor of law at Stanford Law School and founder of its Center for Internet and Society. Lessig is founding board member of Creative Commons and is a board member of the Electronic Frontier Foundation and of the Software Freedom Law Center. He is best known as a proponent of reduced legal restrictions on copyright trademark and radio frequency spectrum particularly in technology applications. At the iCommons iSummit 07 Lessig announced that he will stop focusing his attention on copyright and related matters and will work on political corruption instead. This new work may be partially facilitated through his wiki — “Lessig Wiki” — which he has encouraged the public to use to document cases of corruption. In February 2008 a Facebook group formed by law professor John Palfrey encouraged him to run for Congress from California's 12th congressional district the seat vacated by the death of U.S. Representative Tom Lantos. Later that month after forming an exploratory project the decision was made not to run for the vacant seat. Despite having decided to forgo running for Congress himself Lessig remained interested in attempting to change Congress to reduce corruption. To this end he worked with political consultant Joe Trippi to launch a web-based project called Change Congress. In a press conference on March 20 2008 Lessig explained that he hoped the Change Congress website would help provide technological tools voters could use to hold their representatives accountable and reduce the influence of money on politics.