larry lessig

Larry Lessig has an excellent article over at The Nation, that puts the events of January 18th into perspective.

I just came across this, which actually happened a month ago: Larry Lessig, who is focused entirely on figuring out ways to stop systematic corruption in Washington DC, interviewing disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff, widely considered the perfect example of corruption in DC.

The 1.5 hour discussion is an attempt to not just go over Abramoff's history, but to educate how the Congressional system works.

We've talked a lot about the political process and how things work in DC to get things like SOPA pretty far along, even as the public seems to be almost universally against it.

As you hopefully know by now, Larry Lessig has been focusing his attention on the issue of the deep-seeded corruption in the way our government works today, and his recent book, Republic, Lost focuses deeply on the issue.

We recently pointed to a Larry Lessig speech, in which he argued that WIPO should lead efforts for copyright reform, noting that separate country governments were unlikely to lead copyright law in the right direction, since they tended to be beholden to the interests of legacy industries who benefited from strengthened copyright law.

By pretty much all accounts, The Social Network sounds like a fantastic movie (which is what you'd expect from Aaron Sorkin).

At this point, it's been made clear a hundred times over that it's a work of fiction, rather loosely based on the truth, rather than an accurate depiction of what actually happened in Facebook's early days.

One of the talking points from ACTA supporters was always that it wasn't a "treaty" but an "executive agreement," claiming that this meant something different.

However, as we discussed back in February, this is misleading. Executive agreements are generally a way to sneak treaties through without Congressional approval.

One of the striking aspects of the free software community is its obsession with licences. It's as if within every hacker there's a lawyer struggling to get out.

But maybe it's not so surprising; as Larry Lessig reminded us, “code is law”, and the reverse is also true in the sense that the licence adopted has a big impact on how the software is produced.