Lawrence Lessig | |
|---|---|
 Lessig in 2024 | |
| Born | Lester Lawrence Lessig III (1961-06-03)June 3, 1961 (age 64) Rapid City, South Dakota, U.S. |
| Education | University of Pennsylvania (BA,BS) Trinity College, Cambridge (MA) Yale University (JD) |
| Known for | foundingCreative Commons andEqual Citizens |
| Political party | Democratic |
| Movement | |
| Spouse | |
| Children | 3 |
| Website | lessig |
Lester Lawrence "Larry"Lessig III (born June 3, 1961) is an American legal scholar andpolitical activist. He is the Roy L. Furman Professor of Law atHarvard Law School and the former director of theEdmond J. Safra Center for Ethics atHarvard University.[1] He is the founder ofCreative Commons andEqual Citizens. Lessig was acandidate for theDemocratic Party's nomination forpresident of the United States in the2016 U.S. presidential election but withdrew before the primaries.
Lessig was born on June 3, 1961, inRapid City, South Dakota, to Lester Lawrence "Jack" Lessig II (1929–2020) who was an engineer and Patricia "Pat" West Lessig (1930–2019), a real estate agent.[2][3][4][5] He has two older step-siblings, Robert (died 2019) and Kitty, and a younger biological sister, Leslie. He grew up inWilliamsport, Pennsylvania. He graduated from theUniversity of Pennsylvania in 1983 with a double degreeB.A. ineconomics and aB.S. in management. He then studiedphilosophy atTrinity College, Cambridge, receiving aM.A. in 1986. Lessig then returned to the United States to attend law school. He did his first year at theUniversity of Chicago Law School before transferring toYale Law School, and graduated in 1989 with aJ.D. degree.
After graduation from law school, Lessig was alaw clerk forRichard Posner of theU.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit from 1989 to 1990, and then for JusticeAntonin Scalia of theU.S. Supreme Court from 1990 to 1991.[6] Lessig started his academic career at theUniversity of Chicago Law School, where he was professor from 1991 to 1997. As co-director of its Center for the Study of Constitutionalism in Eastern Europe, he helped the newly independentRepublic of Georgia draft a constitution.[7] From 1997 to 2000, he was atHarvard Law School, holding for a year the chair of Berkman Professor of Law, affiliated with theBerkman Klein Center for Internet & Society.[6] He subsequently joinedStanford Law School, where he established theStanford Center for Internet and Society.[8]
Lessig returned to Harvard in July 2009 as professor and director of the Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics.[9] In 2013, Lessig was appointed as the Roy L. Furman Professor of Law and Leadership at Harvard; his chair lecture was entitled "Aaron's Laws: Law and Justice in a Digital Age".[10][11]
Lessig is a proponent of reduced legal restrictions oncopyright,trademark, andradio frequency spectrum, particularly in technology applications. In 2001, he foundedCreative Commons, a nonprofit organization devoted to expanding the range of creative works available for others to build upon and to share legally. Prior to his most recent appointment at Harvard, he was a professor of law atStanford Law School, where he founded the Stanford Center for Internet and Society, and at theUniversity of Chicago. He is a former board member of theFree Software Foundation andSoftware Freedom Law Center; the Washington, D.C. lobbying groupsPublic Knowledge andFree Press; and theElectronic Frontier Foundation.[12] He was elected to theAmerican Philosophical Society in 2007.[13]
As a political activist, Lessig called for state-based activism to promote substantive reform of government with aSecond Constitutional Convention.[14] In May 2014, he launched a crowd-fundedpolitical action committee that he entitledMayday PAC, with the purpose of electing candidates toCongress who would passcampaign finance reform.[15] Lessig is also the co-founder ofRootstrikers, and is on the boards ofMapLight andRepresent.Us.[16] He serves on the advisory boards of the Democracy Café,[17] as well as theSunlight Foundation.[18]
In August 2015, Lessig announced that he was exploring a possible candidacy for president of the United States, promising to run if his exploratory committee raised $1 million byLabor Day.[19][20] After accomplishing this, on September 6, 2015, Lessig announced that he was entering the raceto become a candidate for the 2016Democratic Partypresidential nomination.[21] Lessig described his candidacy as a referendum oncampaign finance reform andelectoral reform legislation. He stated that, if elected, he would serve a full term as president with his proposed reforms as his legislative priorities.[22] He ended his campaign in November 2015, citing rule changes from the Democratic Party that precluded him from appearing in the televised debates.[23][24]
.jpg)
Lessig emphasized in interviews that his study of philosophy atCambridge radically changed his values and career path. Previously, he had held strongconservative orlibertarian political views, desired a career in business, was a highly active member ofTeenage Republicans, served as the 1978 youth governor for Pennsylvania through theYMCA Youth and Government program,[25] and almost pursued aRepublican political career. Since studying philosophy at Cambridge in the mid-1980s, Lessig has been politicallyliberal. What was intended to be a year abroad at Cambridge convinced him instead to stay another two years to complete an undergraduate degree in philosophy and develop his changing political values. During this time, he also traveled in theEastern Bloc, where he acquired a lifelong interest inEastern European law and politics.[26]
By the late 1980s, two influential conservative judges, JudgeRichard Posner and JusticeAntonin Scalia, selected him to serve as alaw clerk, choosing him because they considered him brilliant rather than for his ideology, and effectively making him the "token liberal" on their respective staffs.[27] Posner would later call Lessig "the most distinguished law professor of his generation".[28] Lessig remains skeptical of government intervention, but favors some regulation, calling himself "a constitutionalist". On one occasion, Lessig also commended theJohn McCain campaign for discussingfair use rights in a letter toYouTube where it took issue with YouTube for indulging overreaching copyright claims that led to the removal of various campaign videos.[29]
Incomputer science, "code" typically refers to the text of a computer program (thesource code). In law, "code" may refer to the texts that constitutestatutory law. In his 1999 book entitledCode and Other Laws of Cyberspace, Lessig explores the ways in which code can be instruments forsocial control in both senses, leading to his dictum that "Code is law". Lessig later updated his work in order to keep up with the prevailing views of the time and released the book asCode: Version 2.0 in December 2006.
Lessig has been a proponent of theremix culture since the early 2000s.[30] In his 2008 book entitled,Remix,[31][32] he presents this as a desirable cultural practice distinct from piracy. Lessig further articulates remix culture as intrinsic to technology and the Internet. Remix culture is therefore an amalgam of practice, creativity, "read/write" culture, and the hybrid economy. According to Lessig, the problem with the remix comes when it is at odds with stringent U.S. copyright law. He has compared this to the failure ofprohibition, both in its ineffectiveness and in its tendency to normalize criminal behavior. Instead he proposes more lenient licensing, namelyCreative Commons licenses, as a remedy to maintain "rule of law" while combating plagiarism.[33]
On March 28, 2004, Lessig was elected to the FSF board of directors.[34] He proposed the concept of "free culture".[35] Lessig is also a well-known critic ofcopyright term extensions, and supportsfree and open-source software andopen spectrum.[36] At his free culture keynote speech at theO'Reilly Open Source Convention 2002, a few minutes of his speech was aboutsoftware patents,[37] which he views as a rising threat tofree software,open source software, and innovation. In March 2006, Lessig joined the board of advisors of theDigital Universe project.[38] A few months later, Lessig gave a talk on the ethics of the Free Culture Movement at the 2006Wikimania conference. In December 2006, his lecture "On Free, and the Differences between Culture and Code" was one of the highlights at theChaos Communication Congress with the motto "Who can you trust?"[39]
According to Comedy Central, Lessig claimed in 2009 that because 70 percent of young people obtain digital information from illegal sources, laws should be changed.[40] In a foreword to theFreesouls book project, Lessig makes an argument in favor of amateur artists in the world of digital technologies, stating that "there is a different class of amateur creators that digital technologies have ... enabled, and a different kind of creativity has emerged as a consequence."[41]
Lessig has long been known to be a supporter ofnet neutrality. In 2006, he testified before the U.S. Senate that he believed Congress should ratifyMichael Powell's four Internet freedoms and add a restriction to access-tiering, i.e., he does not believe content providers should be charged different amounts. The reason is that the Internet, under the neutral end-to-end design is an invaluable platform for innovation, and the economic benefit of innovation would be threatened if large corporations could purchase faster service to the detriment of newer companies with less capital; however, Lessig has supported the idea of allowing ISPs to give consumers the option of different tiers of service at different prices. He was reported on CBC News as saying that he has always been in favour of allowing internet providers to charge differently for consumer access at different speeds. He said, "Now, no doubt, my position might be wrong. Some friends in the network neutrality movement as well as some scholars believe it is wrong—that it doesn't go far enough. But the suggestion that the position is 'recent' is baseless. If I'm wrong, I've always been wrong."[42]
Despite presenting an anti-regulatory standpoint in many fora, Lessig still sees the need for legislative enforcement of copyright. He has called for limiting copyright terms for creative professionals to five years, but believes that since many of them are independent, the work of creative professionals would become more easily and quickly available if a bureaucratic procedure were introduced to renew trademarks for up to 75 years after this five-year term.[43]
Lessig has repeatedly taken a stance that privatization through legislation such as that seen in the 1980s in the UK with British Telecommunications is not the best way to help the Internet grow. He said, "When government disappears, it's not as if paradise will take its place. When governments are gone, other interests will take their place", before adding, "My claim is that we should focus on the values of liberty. If there is not government to insist on those values, then who?", and concluded, "The single unifying force should be that we govern ourselves."[44]
| External videos | |
|---|---|
.jpg) | |
 Q&A: Lawrence Lessig (58:48),C-SPAN[45] | |
| Larry Lessig: Laws that choke creativity (19:08),TED talks[46] | |
| TEDxNYED – Lawrence Lessig (19:07),TEDx talks[47] |
From 1999 to 2002, Lessig represented a high-profile challenge to theSonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act. Working with theBerkman Center for Internet and Society, Lessig led the team representing the plaintiff inEldred v. Ashcroft.[48] The plaintiff in the case was joined by a group of publishers who frequently published work in thepublic domain and a large number ofamici including theFree Software Foundation, theAmerican Association of Law Libraries, theBureau of National Affairs, and theCollege Art Association. In March 2003, Lessig acknowledged severe disappointment with his Supreme Court defeat in the Eldred copyright-extension case, where he unsuccessfully tried to convince Chief Justice William Rehnquist, who had sympathies for de-regulation, to back his "market-based" approach to intellectual property regulation.[49]
In August 2013, Lawrence Lessig brought suit against Liberation Music PTY Ltd., after Liberation issued a takedown notice of one of Lessig's lectures on YouTube that had used the song "Lisztomania" by the bandPhoenix, whom Liberation Music represents.[50][51] Lessig sought damages under section 512(f) of theDigital Millennium Copyright Act, which holds parties liable for misrepresentations of infringement or removal of material.[52] Lessig was represented by theElectronic Frontier Foundation andJones Day.[53] In February 2014, the case ended with a settlement in which Liberation Music admitted wrongdoing in issuing the takedown notice, issued an apology, and paid a confidential sum in compensation.[54][55]
In October 2014,Killswitch, a film featuring Lawrence Lessig, as well asAaron Swartz,Tim Wu, andEdward Snowden received its World Premiere at theWoodstock Film Festival, where it won the award for Best Editing. In the film, Lessig frames the story of two young hacktivists, Swartz and Snowden, who symbolize the disruptive and dynamic nature of the Internet. The film reveals the emotional bond between Lessig and Swartz, and how it was Swartz (the mentee) who challenged Lessig (the mentor) to engage in the political activism that has led to Lessig's crusade forcampaign finance reform.[56][57] In February 2015,Killswitch was invited to be screened at the Capitol Visitor Center in Washington, D.C., by CongressmanAlan Grayson. The event was held on the eve of the Federal Communications Commission's historic decision onNet Neutrality. Lessig, Congressman Grayson, andFree Press CEO Craig Aaron spoke about the importance of protecting net neutrality and the free and open Internet.[58][59]
Congressman Grayson states that Killswitch is "One of the most honest accounts of the battle to control the Internet -- and access to information itself."[58]Richard von Busack of theMetro Silicon Valley, writes ofKillswitch, "Some of the most lapidary use of found footage this side of The Atomic Café".[56] Fred Swegles of theOrange County Register, remarks, "Anyone who values unfettered access to online information is apt to be captivated byKillswitch, a gripping and fast-paced documentary."[57] Kathy Gill ofGeekWire asserts that "Killswitch is much more than a dry recitation of technical history. Director Ali Akbarzadeh, producer Jeff Horn, and writer Chris Dollar created a human centered story. A large part of that connection comes from Lessig and his relationship with Swartz."[60]
In December 2016, Lawrence Lessig andLaurence Tribe establishedThe Electors Trust under the aegis ofEqualCitizens.US to providepro bono legal counsel, as well as a secure communications platform for those of the538 members of theUnited States Electoral College regarding avote of conscience againstDonald Trump in the 2016 election.[61] Lessig hosts the podcastAnother Way in conjunction withThe Young Turks Network.[62]
Lessig came out in favor of a "right to warn" proposed by formerOpenAI employees that would protect their right to warn the public of thecatastrophic risks of AI. Lessig also agreed to workpro bono in defense of the whistleblowers.[63][64] In August 2024, Lessig co-authored a letter alongside AI researchersYoshua Bengio,Geoffrey Hinton, andStuart Russell in favor ofSB 1047, a California AI safety bill that would require companies training the most powerful models to perform risk assessments on their models before release. The letter argued that the bill would be a first step towards mitigating the severe risks posed by AI, and "the bare minimum for effective regulation of this technology". Lessig said thatGavin Newsom, the Governor of California, would have the opportunity to "cement California as a national first-mover in regulating AI".[65][66]
.jpg)
At the iCommons iSummit 07, Lessig announced that he would stop focusing his attention on copyright and related matters in order to work onpolitical corruption instead, as the result of a transformative conversation withAaron Swartz, a young internet prodigy whom Lessig met through his work withCreative Commons.[67] This new work was partially facilitated through hiswiki, Lessig Wiki, through which he has encouraged the public to document cases of corruption.[68] Lessig criticized therevolving-door phenomenon in which legislators and staffers leave office to becomelobbyists and after having become beholden to special interests.[69]
In February 2008, aFacebook group formed by law professorJohn Palfrey encouraged Lessig to run for Congress fromCalifornia's 12th congressional district, the seat vacated by the death of RepresentativeTom Lantos.[70] Later that month, after forming an "exploratory project", he decided not to run for the vacant seat.[71]
Despite having decided to forgo running for Congress, Lessig remained interested in attempting to change Congress to reduce corruption.[71] To this end, he worked with political consultantJoe Trippi to launch a web based project called "Change Congress".[72] 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.[73] He is a board member ofMAPLight.org, a nonprofit research group illuminating the connection between money and politics.
Change Congress later becameFix Congress First, and was finally named Rootstrikers.[74][75] In November 2011, Lessig announced that Rootstrikers would join forces withDylan Ratigan'sGet Money Out campaign, under the umbrella of the United Republic organization.[76][77] Rootstrikers subsequently came under the aegis ofDemand Progress, an organization co-founded byAaron Swartz.[78]
In 2010, Lessig began to organize for a national Article V convention.[79] He co-foundedFix Congress First! withJoe Trippi.[80] In a speech in 2011, Lessig revealed that he was disappointed withBarack Obama's performance in office, criticizing it as a "betrayal", and he criticized the president for using "the (Hillary) Clinton playbook".[81] Lessig has called for state governments to call for a national Article V convention,[82] including by supportingWolf-PAC, a national organization attempting to call an Article V convention to address the problem.[83]
The convention Lessig supports would be populated by a "random proportional selection of citizens" which he suggested would work effectively. He said "politics is a rare sport where the amateur is better than the professional".[82] He promoted this idea at a September 24–25, 2011, conference he co-chaired with theTea Party Patriots' national coordinator,[84] in Lessig's October 5, 2011, book,Republic, Lost: How Money Corrupts Congress—and a Plan to Stop It,[85] and at the Occupy protest in Washington, D.C.[86] ReporterDan Froomkin said the book offers a manifesto for theOccupy Wall Street protestors, focusing on the core problem of corruption in both political parties and their elections.[87] An Article V convention does not dictate a solution, but Lessig would support a constitutional amendment that would allow legislatures to limit political contributions from non-citizens, including corporations, anonymous organizations, and foreign nationals and he also supportspublic campaign financing andelectoral college reform to establish theone person, one vote principle.[88]
TheNew Hampshire Rebellion is a walk to raise awareness about corruption in politics.[89] The event began in 2014 with a 185-mile march in New Hampshire.[90] In its second year the walk expanded to include other locations in New Hampshire.[91] From January 11 to January 24, 2014, Lessig and many others, such as New York activistJeff Kurzon, marched fromDixville Notch, New Hampshire to Nashua (a 185-mile march) to promote the idea of tackling "the systemic corruption in Washington".[92] Lessig chose this language over the related term "campaign finance reform", commenting in an interview with theCarnegie Council that the term "sounds like an alcoholic as someone who has a liquid intake problem."[93] The walk was to continue the work of New Hampshire nativeDoris "Granny D" Haddock, and in honor of deceased activistAaron Swartz.[89] The New Hampshire Rebellion marched 16 miles from Hampton to New Castle on the New Hampshire Seacoast.[94] The initial location also was chosen because of its important and visible role in the quadrennial "New Hampshire primaries", the traditional first primary of the presidential election.[94]
Lessig announced the launch of his long shot presidential campaign on September 6, 2015. On August 11, 2015, Lessig announced that he had launched an exploratory campaign for the purpose of exploring his prospects of winning theDemocratic Party nomination forpresident of the United States in the 2016 election.[20][95] Lessig pledged to seek the nomination if he raised one million dollars byLabor Day 2015.[95] The announcement was widely reported in national media outlets, and was timed to coincide with a media blitz by the Lessig 2016 Campaign. Lessig was interviewed inThe New York Times andBloomberg. Campaign messages and Lessig's electoral finance reform positions were circulated widely on social media.[95][96]
His campaign was focused on a single issue:The Citizen Equality Act, a proposal that couplescampaign finance reform with other laws aimed at curbinggerrymandering and ensuringvoting access.[95] As an expression of his commitment to the proposal, Lessig initially promised to resign once the Citizen Equality Act became law and turn the presidency over to his vice president, who would then serve out the remainder of the term as a typical American president and act on a variety of issues. In October 2015, Lessig abandoned his automatic resignation plan and adopted a full policy platform for the presidency, although he did retain the passage of the Citizen Equality Act as his primary legislative objective.[95] Lessig made a single campaign stop in Iowa, with an eye toward the first-in-the-nation precinct caucuses: at Dordt College, in Sioux Center, in late October. He announced the end of his campaign on November 2, 2015.[23]
In 2017, Lessig announced a movement byEqual Citizens to challenge the winner-take-allElectoral College vote allocation in the various states, called Equal Votes.[97] Lessig was also a counsel for electors in the Supreme Court caseChiafalo v. Washington where the court decided states could force electors to follow the popular vote for their state.[98][99]
In 2002, Lessig received theAward for the Advancement of Free Software from theFree Software Foundation (FSF).[34] He also received theScientific American 50 Award for having "argued against interpretations of copyright that could stifle innovation and discourse online."[100] In 2006, Lessig was elected to theAmerican Academy of Arts and Sciences.[101]
In 2011, Lessig was named to the Fastcase 50, "honoring the law's smartest, most courageous innovators, techies, visionaries, and leaders".[102] Lessig was awarded honorary doctorates by the Faculty of Social Sciences atLund University, Sweden in 2013 and by theUniversité catholique de Louvain in 2014.[103][104] Lessig received the2014 Webby Lifetime Achievement award for co-founding Creative Commons and defending net neutrality and thefree and open software movement.[105]
In May 2005, it was revealed that Lessig had experiencedsexual abuse by the director at theAmerican Boychoir School, which he had attended as an adolescent.[106] Lessig reached a settlement with the school in the past, under confidential terms. He revealed his experiences in the course of representing another student victim, John Hardwicke, in court.[107] In August 2006, he succeeded in persuading theNew Jersey Supreme Court to radically restrict the scope of immunity, which had protected nonprofits that failed to prevent sexual abuse from legal liability.[108]
Lessig is married to Bettina Neuefeind, a German-born Harvard University colleague. The two married in 1999.[109] He and Neuefeind have three children: Willem, Coffy, and Tess.[110]
In 2019, during the criminal investigation ofJeffrey Epstein, it was discovered that theMIT Media Lab under former directorJoichi Ito had accepted secret donations from Epstein after Epstein had been convicted on criminal charges. Ito eventually resigned as director of the MIT Media Lab following this discovery. After making supportive comments to Ito, Lessig wrote aMedium post in September 2019 to explain his stance. In his post, Lessig acknowledged that universities should not take donations from convicted criminals such as Epstein who had become wealthy through actions unrelated to their criminal convictions; however, if such donations were to be accepted, it was better to take them secretly rather than publicly connect the university to the criminal.[111][112]
Lessig's essay drew criticism, and about a week laterNellie Bowles ofThe New York Times had an interview with Lessig in which he reiterated his stance related to such donations broadly.[113] The article used the headline "A Harvard Professor Doubles Down: If You Take Epstein’s Money, Do It in Secret", which Lessig confirmed was based on a statement he had made to theTimes. Lessig took issue with the headline overlooking his argument that MIT should not accept such donations in the first place and also criticized the first two lines of the article which read, "It is hard to defend soliciting donations from the convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. But Lawrence Lessig, a Harvard Law professor, has been trying." He subsequently accused theTimes of writingclickbait with the headline crafted to defame him, and stated that the circulation of the article on social media had hurt his reputation.[114]
In January 2020, Lessig filed a defamation lawsuit against theTimes, including writer Bowles, business editor Ellen Pollock, and executive editor Dean Baquet. TheTimes stated they would "vigorously" defend against Lessig's claim, and believed that what they had published was accurate and had been reviewed by senior editors following Lessig's initial complaints.[115] In April 2020, theTimes changed its original headline to read "What Are the Ethics of Taking Tainted Funds? A conversation with Lawrence Lessig about Jeffrey Epstein, M.I.T. and reputation laundering".[116] Lessig reported he subsequently withdrew his defamation lawsuit.[117]
Biography portal
Free and open-source software portal
Internet portal
Law portal
Politics portal
United States portalLawrence Lessig's call for state-based activism on behalf of a Constitutional Convention could provide the uprooted movement with a political project for winter
(see question & answer session near the end of the video; see 50:30+)
(see 32.06 minutes into the video)
Media from Commons
Quotations from Wikiquote
Texts from Wikisource
Data from Wikidata| Academic offices | ||
|---|---|---|
| Preceded by | Director of theEdmond J. Safra Center for Ethics atHarvard University 2009–2015 | Succeeded by |
