Revision as of 14:56, 8 September 2004
Lawrence Lessig (b. June 3, 1961) is a professor of law at Stanford Law School and founder of its Center for Internet and Society. Prior to joining Stanford he taught at the Harvard Law School and the University of Chicago Law School. Although considered a liberal, he clerked for strongly conservative Judge Richard Posner and Justice Antonin Scalia. He was educated at Wharton School of Business, Trinity College, Cambridge, and Yale Law School. Lessig is a well-known critic of lengthening the term of copyright.
Recently he represented the plaintiff, Eric Eldred, in Eldred v. Ashcroft and proposed the concept of "Free Culture" . He also supports free software and open spectrum . He is founder and chairman of the Creative Commons and a board member of the EFF.
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.
His books include:
Lawrence Lessig was awarded the 2002 FSF Award for the Advancement of Free Software from the Free Software Foundation. Also, he was elected to the Free Software Foundation's Board of Directors on March 28, 2004.
External links
- Lawrence Lessig's web site
- Transcript and Court Opinion for Eldred v. Ashcroft
- 2002 FSF Award for the Advancement of Free Software
- "Free Culture" keynote from OSCON 2002 (including an audio recording and a flash animation with the recording of his presentation as well as the presentation itself)
- coverage of Lessig's opposition to the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act
- Some Like It Hot essay by Lessig in Wired 12.03 excerpted from Free Culture: How Big Media Uses Technology and the Law to Lock Down Culture and Control Creativity
- a lot of links to speeches are on his wiki.ael.be page
- How I Lost The Big One - Lessigs account of why the Eldred v. Ashcroft case went to Ashcroft