Lawrence Lessig
Born	(1961-06-03) June 3, 1961 (age 51) Rapid City, South Dakota, U.S.
Occupation	Founder, Creative Commons Founder, Stanford Center for Internet and Society Professor, Harvard Law School
Spouse	Bettina Neuefeind
Website
lessig.org

Interview with Lawrence Lessig in 2009.

Lawrence "Larry" Lessig (born June 3, 1961) is an American academic and political activist. He is best known as a proponent of reduced legal restrictions on copyright, trademark, and radio frequency spectrum, particularly in technology applications, and he has called for state-based activism to promote substantive reform of government with a Second Constitutional Convention.^[1]

He is a director of the Edmond J. Safra Foundation Center for Ethics at Harvard University and a professor of law at Harvard Law School. Prior to rejoining Harvard, he was a professor of law at Stanford Law School and founder of its Center for Internet and Society. Lessig is a founding board member of Creative Commons, and also is on the board of MapLight.^[2] He is on the advisory boards of the Sunlight Foundation^[3] and Americans Elect.^[4] He is a former board member of the Free Software Foundation, Software Freedom Law Center and the Electronic Frontier Foundation.^[5]

Academic career[link]

Born in Rapid City, South Dakota, Lessig grew up in Williamsport, Pennsylvania, and earned a B.A. in Economics and a B.S. in Management (Wharton School) from the University of Pennsylvania, an M.A. in philosophy from the University of Cambridge (Trinity) in England, and a Juris Doctor from Yale Law School in 1989. After graduating from law school, he clerked for a year for Judge Richard Posner, at the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals in Chicago, Illinois and another year for Justice Antonin Scalia at the Supreme Court.^[6]

Lessig started his academic career at the University of Chicago Law School, where he was Professor from 1991 to 1997. From 1997 to 2000, he was at Harvard Law School, holding for a year the chair of Berkman Professor of Law, affiliated with the Berkman Center for Internet & Society.^[6] He subsequently joined Stanford Law School, where he established the school's Center for Internet and Society.^[7]

Lessig returned to Harvard in December 2008 as Professor and Director of the "Edmond J. Safra Foundation Center for Ethics".^[8]

Political activism[link]

Lessig is currently considered politically liberal. As a law clerk, however, he worked for both Judge Richard Posner and Justice Antonin Scalia, two influential conservative judges.

Lessig has emphasized in interviews that his philosophy experience at Cambridge radically changed his values and career path. Previously, he had held strong conservative or libertarian political views, desired a career in business, was a highly active member of Teenage Republicans, serving as the Youth Governor for Pennsylvania through the YMCA Youth and Government program^[9] in 1978 and almost pursued a Republican political career.

What was intended to be a year abroad at Cambridge convinced him instead to stay another two years to complete a graduate degree in philosophy there and develop his changed political values. During this time, he also traveled in the Eastern Bloc, so acquiring a lifelong interest in Eastern European law and politics.

Lessig refuses to embrace conventional libertarianism. While Lessig remains skeptical of government intervention, he favors regulation by calling himself "a constitutionalist". In his blog, Lessig came out in favor of then-Democratic primary candidate Barack Obama, citing the transformative nature of Obama's campaign as one of his chief reasons. On one occasion, Lessig also commended the John McCain campaign for discussing fair use rights in a letter to YouTube where it took issue with YouTube for indulging overreaching copyright claims leading to the removal of various campaign videos.^[10]

In a speech in 2011, Lessig revealed that he was disappointed with Obama's performance in office, criticizing it as a "betrayal", and he criticized the president for using "the (Hillary) Clinton playbook".^[11] Lessig has called for state governments to call for a national constitutional convention,^[12] and that the convention 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."^[12]

Constitutional convention[link]

In 2010, Lessig began to organize for a national constitutional convention.^[13] He co-founded Fix Congress First! with Joe Trippi.^[14] Lessig called for a convention to propose amendments to the United States Constitution^[15] in a September 24–25, 2011 conference co-chaired by the Tea Party Patriots' national coordinator,^[16] in Lessig's October 5 book, Republic, Lost: How Money Corrupts Congress – and a Plan to Stop It,^[17] and at the Occupy protest in Washington, DC.^[18] Reporter Dan Froomkin said the book offers a manifesto for the Occupy Wall Street protestors, focusing on the core problem of corruption in both political parties and their elections.^[19] Lessig's initial constitutional amendment would allow legislatures to limit political contributions from non-citizens, including corporations, anonymous organizations, and foreign nationals, and he also supports public campaign financing and electoral college reform to establish the one person, one vote principle.^[20] Lessig's web site convention.idea.informer.com allows anyone to propose and vote on constitutional amendments.^[21]

Rootstrikers[link]

Change Congress, founded by Lessig and Joe Trippi, the Fix Congress First project, and the Rootstrikers project were created to help volunteers to address the problem of money in politics.^[22][23] In November 2011, Lessig announced all three projects would become part of the "United Republic". http://unitedrepublic.org/.  organization, along with Dylan Ratigan’s Get Money Out campaign.^[24][25]

Money in politics[link]

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.^[26] 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.^[27] Lessig criticized the revolving door phenomenon in which legislators and staffers leave office to become lobbyists and have become beholden to special interests.^[28]

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.^[29] Later that month, after forming an "exploratory project", the decision was made not to run for the vacant seat.^[30]

Despite having decided to forgo running for Congress himself, Lessig remained interested in attempting to change Congress to reduce corruption.^[30] To this end, he worked with political consultant Joe Trippi to launch a web based project called "Change Congress".^[31] 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.^[32] He is a board member of MAPLight.org, a nonprofit research group illuminating the connection between money and politics.

Lessig has known president Barack Obama since their days of both teaching law at the University of Chicago, and had been mentioned as a candidate to head the Federal Communications Commission, which regulates the telecommunications industry.^[33] However, this position is now held by Julius Genachowski.^[34]

At his talk at the 2009 Aspen Ideas Festival, Professor Lessig talked about Forbin Problems in a talk entitled Will Technology Change Our Lives?^[35] and also about his idea that the American public has lost faith in the central institution of our democracy, Congress.^[36]

Internet and computer activism[link]

"Code is law"[link]

In computer science, "code" typically refers to the text of a computer program (the source code). In law, "code" can refer to the texts that constitute statutory law. In his book Code and Other Laws of Cyberspace, Lessig explores the ways in which code in both senses can be instruments for social control, 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 as Code: Version 2.0 in December 2006.

Legislative reform[link]

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 introducing the bureaucratic procedure needed to renew trademarks, by making copyright need to be renewed for up to 75 years after this five year term, would mean that creative professionals' work, many of the independent, would become more easily and quickly available.^[37] Lessig has repeated taken a stance that privatization through legislation like 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," "My claim is that we should focus on the values of liberty. If there is not government to insist on those values, then who?" "The single unifying force should be that we govern ourselves." ^[38]

Free Culture[link]

In 2002, Lessig received the 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.^[39] In 2006, Lessig was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.^[40] Lessig is also a well-known critic of copyright term extensions.

He proposed the concept of "Free Culture".^[41] He also supports free software and open spectrum.^[42] At his Free Culture keynote at the O'Reilly Open Source Convention 2002, half of his speech was about software patents, which he views as a rising threat to both free/open source software and innovation.

Lessig and Jimmy Wales at the iCommons iSummit07 in Dubrovnik.

In March 2006, Lessig joined the board of advisors of the Digital Universe project.^[43] A few months later, Lessig gave a talk on the ethics of the Free Culture Movement at the 2006 Wikimania conference.

Lessig claimed in 2009 that, because 70% of young people obtain digital information from illegal sources, the law should be changed.^[44]

Net neutrality[link]

Lessig has long been known to be a supporter of Net Neutrality. In 2006, he testified before the US Senate that he believed Congress should ratify 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." ^[45]

Combating sexual abuse[link]

In May 2005, it was revealed that Lessig had experienced sexual abuse by the director at the American Boychoir School which he had attended as an adolescent.^[46] 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.^[47] In August 2006, he succeeded in persuading the New Jersey Supreme Court to restrict the scope of immunity radically, which had protected nonprofits that failed to prevent sexual abuse from legal liability.^[48]

Media references[link]

Lessig appears as a character in a 2005 episode of the television political drama The West Wing ("The Wake Up Call", season 6, episode 14). Lessig’s character, portrayed by Christopher Lloyd, is intended to be a realistic depiction including such details as citing his book The Future of Ideas and his expertise in Eastern European constitutional law.^[49]

Artist group Monochrom performed a "Love Song for Lessig" on Boing Boing TV in the November 15, 2007 episode.^[50] The German term "lässig" (meaning "cool" or "relaxed") is pronounced the same as Lessig's last name, and "Love Song for Lessig" uses the homonym for humor.

"Prometeus - The Media Revolution", a video produced by Italian internet consulting company Casaleggio Associati that attempts to predict the future of media over the next 40 to 50 years, proposes Lawrence Lessig to become the new US Secretary of Justice and declare copyright to be illegal in 2020.

Legal challenges[link]

Lessig's political opinions on copyright law have led to legal challenges where he has attempted to put them into action without legislative change. In March 2003 he 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 has sympathies for de-regulation, to back his "market-based" approach to intellectual property regulation.^[51]

Notable cases[link]

• Hardwicke v. American Boychoir (representing plaintiff John Hardwicke) Pending^[48]
• Golan v. Gonzales (representing multiple plaintiffs)
• Eldred v. Ashcroft (representing plaintiff Eric Eldred) Lost
• Kahle v. Ashcroft—(also see Brewster Kahle) Dismissed
• United States v. Microsoft (special master and author of an amicus brief addressing the Sherman Act^[52])
  • Lessig was appointed special master by Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson in 1997. The appointment was vacated by the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.^[53] The appellate court ruled that the powers granted to Lessig exceeded the scope of the Federal statute providing for special masters. Judge Jackson then solicited Lessig’s amicus brief.
  • Lessig himself says about this appointment: "Did Justice Jackson pick me to be his special master because he had determined I was the perfect mix of Holmes and Ed Felten? No, I was picked because I was a Harvard Law Professor teaching the law of cyberspace. Remember: So is 'fame' made."^[54]
• MPAA v. 2600 (submitted an amicus brief with Yochai Benkler in support of 2600^[55])

Personal life[link]

Lessig is married to Bettina Neuefeind, and is the father of three children (Willem, Teo, and Tess) [1].

Bibliography[link]

• Code and Other Laws of Cyberspace (2000) ISBN 978-0-465-03913-5
• The Future of Ideas (2001) ISBN 978-0-375-50578-2 - available as a free Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommerical (by-nc)
• Free Culture (2004) ISBN 978-1-59420-006-9 - available as a free Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial
• Code: Version 2.0 (2006) ISBN 978-0-465-03914-2 - available as a free Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike (by-sa)
• Remix: Making Art and Commerce Thrive in the Hybrid Economy (2008) ISBN 978-1-59420-172-1 - available as a free Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs (by-nc-nd)
• Republic, Lost: How Money Corrupts Congress--and a Plan to Stop It (2011) ISBN 978-0-446-57643-7

See also[link]

• 99 Percent Declaration
• Copyleft
• Free software movement
• Free content
• FreeCulture.org
• Open educational resources
• Gratis versus Libre
• Open content
• Law of the Horse
• Lobbying in the United States
• Second Constitution of the United States proposal for constitutional reform

References[link]

External links[link]

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Lawrence Lessig

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Lawrence Lessig

• Official website Lessig (includes blog 2002-2009)
• Official website Lessig Blog, v2
• Lawrence Lessig on Twitter
• Lawrence Lessig's channel on YouTube
• Lawrence Lessig at Harvard Law School
  • Profile at the Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics
• Rootstrikers
• Lawrence Lessig at TED Conferences
• Appearances on C-SPAN
  • C-SPAN Q&A interview with Lessig, November 20, 2011
• Lawrence Lessig on Charlie Rose
• Lawrence Lessig at the Internet Movie Database
• Works by or about Lawrence Lessig in libraries (WorldCat catalog)
• Lawrence Lessig collected news and commentary at The New York Times
• Republic, Lost: How Money Corrupts Congress—and a Plan to Stop It talk by Lawrence Lessig

Jack A. Abramoff
Abramoff testifying before the Senate Indian Affairs Committee, September 29, 2004
Born	(1959-02-28) February 28, 1959 (age 53) Atlantic City, New Jersey, U.S.
Conviction(s)	Fraud, conspiracy, tax evasion
Penalty	5 years and 10 months imprisonment
Status	Released December 3, 2010
Occupation	Businessman and lobbyist
Spouse	Pam Alexander Abramoff

Jack Abramoff (pronounced /ˈeɪbrəmɒf/; born February 28, 1959) is an American former lobbyist, businessman, movie producer and writer.^[1][2] He was at the heart of an extensive corruption investigation that led to his conviction and to 21 persons either pleading guilty or being found guilty,^[3] including White House officials J. Steven Griles and David Safavian, U.S. Representative Bob Ney, and nine other lobbyists and Congressional aides.

Abramoff was College Republican National Committee National Chairman from 1981 to 1985, a founding member of the International Freedom Foundation, allegedly financed by apartheid South Africa,^[4][5] and served on the board of directors of the National Center for Public Policy Research, a conservative think tank. From 1994 to 2001 he was a top lobbyist for the firm of Preston Gates & Ellis, and then for Greenberg Traurig until March 2004.

After a guilty plea in the Indian lobbying scandal and his dealings with SunCruz Casinos in January 2006, he was sentenced to six years in federal prison for mail fraud, conspiracy to bribe public officials, and tax evasion. He served four years before being released on December 3, 2010.^[6] After his release from prison, he wrote the book Capitol Punishment: The Hard Truth About Corruption From America's Most Notorious Lobbyist which was published in November 2011.

Abramoff's lobbying and the surrounding scandals and investigation are the subject of two 2010 films: the documentary Casino Jack and the United States of Money, released in May 2010,^[7] and the feature film Casino Jack, released on December 17, 2010, starring Kevin Spacey as Abramoff.^[8][9]

Early life[link]

Jack Abramoff was born in Atlantic City, New Jersey into a Jewish family.^[10] His father, Franklin Abramoff, was president of the Franchises unit of Diners Club credit card company.^[5]

In 1968, when Abramoff was 10, his family moved to Beverly Hills, California, where he attended Beverly Hills High School.^[11] In high school he played football and became a weight-lifting champion.^[10] At the age of 12, after seeing the film version of Fiddler on the Roof, Abramoff decided to become an Orthodox Jew.^[12]

College and law school years[link]

As an undergraduate at Brandeis University,^[11] Abramoff served as Chairman of the Massachusetts Alliance of College Republicans, which organized student volunteers for Ronald Reagan's 1980 presidential campaign. He graduated with a B.A. in English in 1981, taking six years to finish his degree, and earned his Juris Doctor from the Georgetown University Law Center in 1986.

According to Nina Easton, Abramoff gained much of his credibility in the conservative movement through his father, Franklin Abramoff. As president of Diners Club International, Abramoff's father worked closely with Alfred S. Bloomingdale, a personal friend of Ronald Reagan.^[13]

College Republican National Chairman[link]

After graduating from Brandeis, Abramoff ran for election as chairman of the College Republican National Committee (CRNC). After a campaign which cost over $10,000 and was managed by Grover Norquist, Abramoff won the election after the chief competitor, Amy Moritz (who later, as Amy Ridenour, became a founding director of the National Center for Public Policy Research, and was involved in several trips funded by Jack Abramoff), was persuaded to drop out. Abramoff "changed the direction of the committee and made it more activist and conservative than ever before," notes the CRNC. "It is not our job to seek peaceful coexistence with the Left", Abramoff was quoted as saying in the group's 1983 annual report. "Our job is to remove them from power permanently."^[14]

Norquist served as executive director of the committee under Abramoff. He later recruited Ralph Reed, a former president of the University of Georgia College Republicans chapter, as an unpaid intern. According to Reed's book Active Faith, Reed also introduced Abramoff to his future wife, Pam Alexander.

Long-standing college political alliances[link]

At the CRNC, Abramoff developed political alliances with College Republican chapter presidents across the nation, many who would later hold key roles in state and national politics and business, and some who would later interact with Abramoff as a lobbyist. Some of those relationships were at the core of the federal investigation.

At the CRNC, Abramoff, Norquist and Reed formed what was known as the "Abramoff-Norquist-Reed triumvirate". After Abramoff's election, the trio purged "dissidents" and re-wrote the CRNC's bylaws to consolidate their control over the organization. According to Easton's Gang of Five, Reed was the "hatchet man" and "carried out Abramoff-Norquist orders with ruthless efficiency, not bothering to hide his fingerprints".^[13]

In 1983, the CRNC passed a resolution condemning "deliberate planted propaganda by the KGB and Soviet proxy forces" against the government of South Africa, at a time when that country's government was under worldwide criticism for the apartheid regime.^[15]

In 1984, Abramoff and other College Republicans formed the "USA Foundation", a non-partisan tax-exempt organization which held two days of rallies on college campuses around the United States celebrating the first anniversary of the invasion of Grenada. In a letter to campus Republican leaders, Abramoff claimed:

Citizens for America[link]

This section needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (March 2012)

In 1985, Abramoff joined Citizens for America, a pro-Reagan group that helped Oliver North build support for the Nicaraguan Contras. Citizens for America staged an unprecedented meeting of anti-Communist rebel leaders known as the Democratic International in Jamba, Angola. This conference included leaders of the Mujahedeen from Afghanistan, UNITA from Angola, the Contras, and opposition groups from Laos. Out of this largely ceremonial conference came the International Freedom Foundation. Abramoff helped to organize, and also attended the conference.

Abramoff's membership ended on a sour note when Citizens for America's sponsor Lewis Lehrman, a former New York gubernatorial candidate, concluded that Abramoff had spent his money carelessly.^[17]

In 1986, Reagan appointed Abramoff as a member of the United States Holocaust Memorial Council.^[18]

Work in film production, and South Africa connections[link]

Abramoff spent 10 years in Hollywood. He wrote and produced, with his brother Robert, the 1989 film Red Scorpion. The film had a $16 million budget and starred Dolph Lundgren playing the Spetznaz-like Soviet commando Nikolai, sent by the USSR to assassinate an African revolutionary in a country similar to Angola. Nikolai sees the evil of the Soviets and changes sides, becoming a freedom fighter for the African side.^[19][20][21]

The South African government financed the film via the International Freedom Foundation, a front-group chaired by Abramoff, as part of its efforts to undermine international sympathy for the African National Congress.^[22] The filming location was in South-West Africa (now Namibia).^[23][24]

On April 27, 1998, Abramoff wrote a letter to the editor of The Seattle Times rebutting an article critical of him and his alleged role as effectively a Public Relations puppet of the then-apartheid South African military. Abramoff rebutted: "The IFF was a conservative group which I headed. It was vigorously anti-Communist, but it was also actively anti-apartheid. In 1987, it was one of the first conservative groups to call for the release of Nelson Mandela, a position for which it was roundly criticized by other conservatives at the time. While I headed the IFF, we accepted funding only from private individuals and corporations and would have absolutely rejected any offer of South African military funding, or any other kind of funding from any government — good or evil."^[25]

During this period in South Africa, Abramoff first met South African–born rabbi David Lapin, who would become his religious advisor, and Lapin's brother and fellow rabbi Daniel Lapin, who allegedly introduced Abramoff to Congressman Tom DeLay (R-TX) at a Washington, DC dinner shortly after the Republican takeover of Congress in 1994.^[26] Lapin later claimed that he did not recall the introduction.

Seattle-based lobbying[link]

In December 1994, Abramoff was hired as a lobbyist at Preston Gates Ellis & Rouvelas Meeds LLP, the lobbying arm of the law firm Preston Gates & Ellis LLP based in Seattle, Washington. According to The Seattle Times, following the Republican takeover of Congress in 1995, partner Emanuel Rouvelas determined that the firm "didn't have a conservative, Christian Coalition Republican with strong ties to the new Republican leadership".^[27] The traditionally Democratic-leaning firm hired Abramoff for the specific purpose of attaining these wanted ties. Abramoff was described in a press release as having close ties to Newt Gingrich and Dick Armey.

According to The Seattle Times, Abramoff used Preston Gates & Ellis to access a higher pedigree of clientele.^[28]

Choctaw Gambling[link]

In 1995, Abramoff began representing Indian tribes with gambling interests. He became involved with the Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians. One of Abramoff's first acts as a tribal gaming lobbyist was to defeat a Congressional bill to tax Indian casinos, sponsored by Bill Archer (R-TX) and Ernest Istook (R-OK). According to Washington Business Forward, a lobbying trade magazine, "Tom DeLay was a major factor in those victories, and the fight helped cement the alliance between the two men".^[29] DeLay has called Abramoff "one of (his) closest and dearest friends".

The Washington Post, on December 29, 2005, reported: "Jack Abramoff liked to slip into dialogue from The Godfather as he led his lobbying colleagues in planning their next conquest on Capitol Hill. In a favorite bit, he would mimic an ice-cold Michael Corleone facing down a crooked politician's demand for a cut of Mafia gambling profits: 'Senator, you can have my answer now if you like. My offer is this: nothing.'"^[30]