NEWS FLASH: I don't "defen[d] piracy"

Posted on October 13, 2008 by Lessig

Sorry to disappoint, but my new book, Remix, is not “A Defense of Piracy,” whatever the Wall Street Journal’s headline writers may think.

Posted in REMIX | 89 Comments

The scary context of this election; the decent efforts to calm

Posted on October 11, 2008 by Lessig

From CBS:

Some of the questioners said they were scared of an Obama presidency, and one woman said she couldn’t trust Obama because “he’s an Arab.”

McCain shook his head. “No ma’am, he’s a decent family man, a citizen, that I just happen to have disagreements with on fundamental issues, and that’s what this campaign is all about.”

Posted in presidential politics | 29 Comments

Open Debates: Focusing the Call

Posted on October 10, 2008 by Lessig

Now that both campaigns have signed on, we’ve focused the call for open debates to try to get some real progress. The new letter is below. Meanwhile, please sign up below to support the call for “open debates.” (The original letter to McCain and Obama is here.)

Join The Open Debate Movement – Sign Up Here




Open Debate Coalition
www.opendebatecoalition.org

Dear Senator McCain and Senator Obama,

Thank you for your recent
letters
affirming our coalition’s open debate principles,
designed to make this year’s presidential debates more “of the people” than
ever before. As we approach the final debate on October 15, we ask you to proactively
implement such principles right away.

The closed nature of the recent debates has been universally criticized. The
editors of Politico wrote,
“The presidential debate commission’s rules are a scandal” resulting in “a
format designed to limit improvisation, intellectual engagement, and
truth-telling.” 83% of Obama supporters and 75% of McCain supporters agree that tough follow-up questions were
lacking. Even Saturday Night Live spoofed the lack
of follow-up questions in the debates, and the watered-down
“town hall” questions chosen.

Therefore, we ask you to jointly announce the following in advance of the
October 15 debate:

1)      That
the debate moderator has broad discretion to ask follow-up questions after a
candidate’s answer, so the public can be fully informed about specific
positions.



2)      That
after a “town hall” debate full of questions handpicked by the moderator, none
of which were outside-the-box, you will allow Bob Schieffer to ask some
Internet questions voted on by the public in the fashion outlined in
our previous letter – which you agreed to. Existing technology
will make this easy.



3)      That,
as a stipulation of the next debate, the media pool must release all 2008
debate footage into the public domain – as you agreed would be in the
public interest. CNN,
ABC, and NBC agreed to release video
rights during the primary, and CBS
agreed more recently. But Fox threatened
Senator McCain for using a debate clip during the primary, and NBC invoked
copyright law against Senator Obama to stifle political speech recently. The
public deserves to know debate video can be reused without fear of breaking the
law.



4)      That
you agree to work with the Open Debate Coalition after the election to reform
or create an alternative to the Commission on Presidential Debates, so that the
debate process is transparent and accountable to the public. Despite both of
your agreement with the open debate principles, the Commission did nothing to
implement them – or even to engage in dialogue about potential
implementation. Also, the “31-page
memo of understanding” with debate rules is nowhere on the Commission’s
website, and has not been turned over despite requests.

The signers of this letter don’t agree on every political issue. But we do
agree that in order for Americans to make the best decision for president, we
need open debates that are “of the people” in the ways described above. You
have the power to make that happen, and we ask you to do so.

Thank you for your willingness to take these ideas to heart. If you have any
questions, please contact: [email protected]

Sincerely,

Lawrence Lessig; Professor, Stanford Law School, Founder, Center for Internet and Society

Ellen Miller; Executive Director, Sunlight
Foundation

Craig Newmark; Founder, Craigslist

Jimmy Wales; Founder, Wikipedia

Glenn Reynolds; Professor, University of Tennessee Law, and founder of Instapundit.com blog

Aaron Swartz;   Founder, Reddit

Patrick Ruffini; Republican consultant, Former Republican National Committee
eCampaign Director, and a blogger at TheNextRight.com

Mindy Finn; Republican strategist, former Mitt Romney Online Director, and blogger at TheNextRight.com

Eli Pariser; Executive Director, MoveOn.org
Political Action

Mike Krempasky; Co-Founder of RedState.com

Adam Green; Director of Strategic Campaigns, MoveOn.org
Political Action

Arianna Huffington; Founder, HuffingtonPost.com

Markos Moulitsas; Founder, DailyKos.com

Roger L. Simon, CEO, Pajamas Media

Eric Burns; President, Media Matters
for America

David Kralik; Director of Internet Strategy, Newt Gingrich’s American Solutions

Carl Pope; Executive Director, Sierra Club

John Amato; Founder of Crooksandliars.com

K. Daniel Glover, Executive Producer, Media Research Center’s
Eyeblast.tv, and of AirCongress

Jon Henke; New media consultant (including
for Fred Thompson, George Allen, Senate Republican Caucus) and a blogger at TheNextRight.com

Matt Stoller; Founder/Editor, OpenLeft.com

James Rucker; Executive Director, ColorOfChange.org

Andrew Rasiej; Personal
Democracy Forum and TechPresident.com

Micah Sifry; Personal Democracy
Forum and TechPresident.com

William Mitchell; Professor, MIT

Josh Silver; Executive Director, Free Press

Carl Malamud; Founder, Public.Resource.Org

Clay Johnson; Director, Sunlight Labs

Robert Greenwald; President, BraveNewFilms

Kim Gandy; President, National Organization for
Women

Roger Hickey; Co-Director, Campaign for
America’s Future

Billy Hallowell, Director of Content, VoterWatch

David Colarusso; Founder, communityCOUNTS.us

Posted in free debates | 1 Comment

good news from Japan

Posted on October 7, 2008 by Lessig

Ikeda-san reports two bits of very good news from Japan:

On Sep. 18, the Council of Culture gave up the extension of copyright from 50 years after the death of the author to 70 years. Two years ago, the Council proposed the extension to follow the “global standard”, but many people on the Web objected against the legislation.

Last week the Council of Information and Communication decided to scrap the B-CAS, the notorious conditional access system for free broadcasting. Due to this change, “Dubbing Ten”, which forbids copying the programs of digital broadcasting more than ten times, would be abolished, because it is enforced by the encryption of B-CAS.

Read more on his blog.

Posted in free culture | Leave a comment

on loving factcheck.org

Posted on October 7, 2008 by Lessig

If you’ve not become a reader of factcheck.org, you should. They work too hard, in my biased view, to present flaws on both sides. But that’s a virtuous sin in such an organization. It’s review of the VP debates is great.

Posted in good code | 11 Comments

Obama reaffirms support for "open debates"

Posted on October 7, 2008 by Lessig

opendebate-obama_600.png

Barack Obama has reaffirmed the position he took in the primaries and asked the Debate Commission to support “open debates.” Here’s the letter.

Three key open questions:

1) Will the media pool choose to put their video of the debates in the public domain, so folks can freely blog key moments and share them without fear of being deemed a lawbreaker?

2) Will Tom Brokaw use some bottom-up debate questions collected and voted on on Google’s site, in addition or in place of the top-down ones the Commission collected?

3) Will the Commission adopt these principles for future debates, now that the candidates from both major parties embrace them?

And one final point: Now that both Senators have affirmed the “open debate” principles, its time for citizens to do the same. Please sign up below to support the call for “open debates.” Once again, the original letter to McCain and Obama is here.

Join The Open Debate Movement – Sign Up Here




Posted in Uncategorized | 17 Comments

and then things got ugly

Posted on October 7, 2008 by Lessig

It has surprised me that this, the tremor before this recent financial disaster, the Keating Five scandal, has not been at the center of this campaign before. But now, apparently in response to Palin’s suggestion that the fact Obama knows Ayers is relevant to whether he should be president, the Obama campaign has released this very strong 15 minute documentary about the Keating scandal.

For those not old enough to remember, here’s the outline: 5 Senators, all of whom had received campaign funding from Charles Keating, intervene with regulators to get them to overlook criminal behavior by Keating, leading to the collapse of Lincoln Savings, leading to a $3.4 billion bill for Americans. The only one of those 5 Senators to receive both personal and political benefits from Keating: McCain.

Fair? Totally relevant to the question whether the judgment of this candidate is the sort that’s needed at this time. Totally relevant to the basic question whether his philosophy — deregulate — is what this sector needs at this time.

Wise? Not sure. I’m not sure Americans distinguish between hard-hitting-and-fair criticism (which this is) and hard-hitting-and-unfair criticism (which Palin’s is). One might worry that they’re “burn[ing] down the house to roast the pig” but I assume they’ve reckoned that.

But ugly? You bet.

Posted in presidential politics | 20 Comments

On effective ways to silence your critics

Posted on October 6, 2008 by Lessig

Harvard Professor Elizabeth Warren tells the (incredible) story of a rule imposed on witnesses who wanted to testify in a credit card hearing that would permit the credit card companies to reveal their private financial data. “Only fair,” defenders of the rule stated, such as Congrssman Bachus (R-AL). But when Warren asked whether the credit card companies would have to provide support for the factual claims they made, the answer was silence. Only consumers have to waive their privacy to testify. Credit card companies get to say whatever they want, without having to establish any factual basis.

Posted in bad law | 1 Comment

Gigi says the Orphan Works Act is dead (for this year)

Posted on October 6, 2008 by Lessig

One of the very few times when I’m happy her work has not prevailed, Gigi Sohn of Public Knowledge on the story of the demise of the Orphan Works Bill.

Posted in bad law | Leave a comment

the many domains of corruption

Posted on October 4, 2008 by Lessig

You wouldn’t think so reading stuff here (exclusively politics focused, sorry for that), but I’ve been following the recommendations on the wiki and elsewhere, and reading tons about corruption in many different contexts. The field of medicine, however, continues to be the most striking to me. Here’s the latest from the great Senator Grassley, as described in an article in the WSJ:

A prominent Emory University psychiatrist failed to tell the school about $500,000 he received from drug maker GlaxoSmithKline PLC while heading a government-funded research project studying Glaxo drugs, Sen. Charles Grassley alleged.

(Thanks, Birgit!)

UPDATE: The psychiatrist has stepped down.

(Thanks again, Birgit.)

Posted in Corruption | 6 Comments