Lawrence Lessig (born 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 the University of Pennsylvania
(incl. Wharton), Trinity College, Cambridge, and Yale Law School.
In 2002, Lessig was awarded the FSF 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.[1] (http://agia.fsf.org/associate/leadership/) Lessig is also a well-known critic of copyright term extensions.
He proposed the concept of "Free Culture" [2] (http://randomfoo.net/oscon/2002/lessig/). He also supports free software and open spectrum [3] (http://cyberlaw.stanford.edu/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.
Lessig is on the board of directors of Software Freedom Law Center, launched in February 2005.
Lessig appears as a character in a 2005 episode of the television political drama
The West Wing ("The Wake Up Call"),
played by Christopher Lloyd. Although portrayed by Lloyd,
Lessig's character in the episode is intended to be the same as in real-life; his 2002 book The Future of Ideas and his expertise in Eastern European
constitutional law. The episode's screenwriter was Josh Singer, himself one of Lessig's former students, and his appearance in the show (where the character of
Lessig assists the drafters of a Belorussian constitution), is loosely based on
Lessig's involvement with work on the Georgian constitution.
(Lessig's comments on his blog (http://www.lessig.org/blog/archives/002421.shtml))
Notable cases
- Eldred v. Ashcroft (representing plaintiff Eric Eldred)
- Kahle v. Ashcroft -
see Brewster Kahle and [4] (http://cyberlaw.stanford.edu/about/cases/kahle_v_ashcroft.shtml#002043)
- Golan v. Ashcroft -
see [5] (http://cyberlaw.stanford.edu/about/cases/golan_v_ashcroft.shtml)
- United States v. Microsoft (special master and
author of an amicus brief addressing the Sherman Act[6] (http://www.lessig.org/content/testimony/ab/ab.pdf))
- MPAA v. 2600 (submitted an amicus brief with Yochai Benkler in support of 2600
[7] (http://www.lessig.org/content/testimony/dvd/dvd.pdf))
Books authored
External links
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