Lawrence Lessig

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Lawrence Lessig (2015)

Lawrence "Larry" Lessig (born June 3, 1961 in Rapid City , South Dakota ) is an American professor of law at the Harvard Law School of Harvard University . He is regarded as an important constitutional lawyer because of his speeches, writings and participation in copyright lawsuits . He founded the Center for Internet and Society and the Creative Commons Initiative . Lawrence Lessig received the FSF Award in 2002 and is a board member of the Software Freedom Law Center, founded in February 2005 . Since 2003 he has been writing monthly columns for Wired Magazine.

Life

education

Lessig studied economics and management at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania . This was followed by a master's degree in philosophy at Trinity College , Cambridge . He completed another law degree with a JD at Yale Law School and worked for judges Richard Posner and Antonin Scalia, who are considered conservative . Prior to his appointment to Stanford, he taught at Harvard Law School , the University of Chicago Law School and was visiting professor at Yale University . Lessig was also a fellow at the Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin .

Constitutional lawyer

Lessig is a renowned constitutional lawyer and specialist in copyright law. He is a staunch critic of restrictive copyrights (corresponds to the exploitation rights of German copyright law ) in the field of intangible goods. Lessig developed the concept of a "free culture" and supports free software and the open source movement. He also founded the Creative Commons Initiative and is a member of the Electronic Frontier Foundation and author of several books on the social developments associated with open content .

In 2006 he was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and in 2007 to the American Philosophical Society .

politics

Campaign Funding

Lessig takes the position that campaign funding is at the core of political problems in the United States. Politicians at all levels spend a large part of their time soliciting the donations they need for the elaborate election campaigns for their re-election. As a result, major donors have excessive influence and determine more about political content than real majorities of citizens. In 2008 Lessig was one of the founders of the Change Congress initiative , which campaigned to declare certain forms of donations to be inadmissible. Change Congress's concern was resolved by the decision of Citizens United v. 2010 Supreme Court Federal Election Commission obsolete. Since then, campaign contributions have been classified as part of freedom of expression and all restrictions have become invalid. The influence of large donors increased again.

Lessig founded a Political Action Committee called Mayday, with which he supports an alternative to campaign funding. For this he collected almost USD 10 million from individual large and many small donations. For the first time at the November 2014 elections, Mayday is funding advertising for candidates who are campaigning for new candidate funding. Two models come into question: On the one hand, a doubling of small donations from tax revenues - similar to the German model - could be introduced. Politicians would then have a stronger incentive to seek small donations. Or a voucher model would equip every citizen with a voucher that benefits a candidate and thereby empowers the individual citizen towards major donors. If the 2014 elections show that Mayday can influence the results in the respective constituencies, he wants to support a reform candidate nationwide in each constituency for the 2016 elections. He reckons it will cost around $ 700 million and wants to raise it by finding 50 billionaires who will jointly support the program.

2016 presidential candidacy

In 2015, Lessig announced that he would run for the Democratic Party in the US presidential elections in order to introduce the reform package Citizen Equality Act of 2017 , which, among other things, is intended to change campaign financing. After this reform package was implemented, he would resign. After the announcement of his immediate resignation was badly received in polls, he announced that he would abandon this plan.

On November 2, 2015, Lessig announced that it would end its campaign. He accused the Democratic Party of having changed the rules of the game at short notice and not having left him room for one of the upcoming TV debates. He emphasized that only as a “time traveler” would it be possible for him to meet the new requirements in order to be able to present himself to a television audience.

Publications (selection)

Web links

Commons : Lawrence Lessig  - Collection of Images, Videos and Audio Files
Contributions by Lessig
Article about the project "Code: Version 2.0"
Interviews
Lectures

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Member History: Lawrence Lessig. Retrieved December 14, 2018 (English, with biographical notes).
  2. ^ The New Yorker: Embrace the Irony - Lawrence Lessig wants to reform campaign finance. All he needs is fifty billionaires , October 2014
  3. ↑ Sasan Abdi-Herrle: The Trump of the Democrats. Zeit Online, August 12, 2015, accessed November 21, 2016 .
  4. ↑ Lawrence Lessig: Larry Lessig: I'm All In. The Atlantic, October 17, 2015, accessed November 21, 2016 .
  5. ^ Daniel Strauss: Lessig drops out of presidential race. Politico, November 2, 2015, accessed November 21, 2016 .
  6. ↑ Stefan Krempl: Internet activist Larry Lessig gets out of US presidential race. heise online, November 3, 2015, accessed on November 21, 2016 .
personal data
SURNAME Lessig, Lawrence
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Lessig, Larry (nickname)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American lawyer, professor of law, founder of the Creative Commons initiative
DATE OF BIRTH June 3, 1961
PLACE OF BIRTH Rapid City , South Dakota