Home > Lawrence Lessig
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 Wharton School of Business, Trinity College, Cambridge, and Yale Law School. Lessig is a well-known critic of lengthening the term of copyright.Notable cases in which he was or is involved include:
- Eldred v. Ashcroft He represented the plaintiff Eric Eldred
- Kahle v. Ashcroft See Brewster KahleBrewster Kahle was an early member of the Thinking Machines team and later went on to found WAIS (sold to AOL) and later Alexa Internet (sold to Amazon. He also founded and continues to run (as of 2004) the Internet Archive. As of March 2004 Kahle is a pl and [1]
- Golan v. Ashcroft See [2]
- United States v. MicrosoftMicrosoft was a widely publicized antitrust trial in which the US Department of Justice (DOJ), joined by twenty U. states, alleged that Microsoft abused monopoly power in its handling of operating system sales and web browser sales. The DOJ and states fil Amicus Curiae. At the Court’s request he submitted a brief addressing the Sherman Act. See [3]
- MPAA v. 2600DeCSS is a computer program capable of decrypting content on a DVD video disc encrypted using the Content Scrambling System (CSS). Origins and history copy prevention. DeCSS was devised by persons unknown and released anonymously on the Internet mailing l Submitted an Amicus Curiae together with Yochai Benkler in support of 2600. See [4]
He proposed the concept of " Free CultureFree Culture: How Big Media Uses Technology and the Law to Lock Down Culture and Control Creativity ( 2004) is a book by law professor Lawrence Lessig that was released on the Internet under the Creative Commons Attribution/Non-commercial license on March" [5]. He also supports free softwareThis article refers to free software as defined by the Free Software Foundation. For software available free of charge, see Freeware. The term free software refers to software which, once obtained, can be used, copied, studied, modified and redistributed. and open spectrumOpen spectrum is a movement to get the government to provide more unlicensed spectrum, radio frequency spectrum that is available for use by all. Proponents of the "commons model" of open spectrum advocate a future where all the spectrum is shared, using [6]. He is founder and chairman of the Creative CommonsThe Creative Commons is a not-for-profit organization devoted to expanding the range of creative work available for others to legally build upon and share. Aim The Creative Commons website enables copyright holders to grant some of their rights to the pub 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:
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. [8]
