Tuesday, June 19, 2007

Lessig Moves on

This seems worth recording, although I doubt I have anything to add that 100s if not 1000s of other commentators will not say.

Lessig has decided to withdraw as active leader of the Creative Commons movement over the next year or so to address what he regards as the underlying problem: "Corruption" , or the way in which public policy is driven (in the USA, though he does not say that) by the money of sectoral lobbying interests.

Well, one wishes him luck. It's become clear over the last few years that Lessig is no longer a law professor , no longer even a lawyer really ; he is a political animal , a camapigner, a rock star of the movement, and so this move makes perfect sense.

For myself, I'm not very excited. The Lessig who is still my hero is the Lessig who invented "code as code", still the most useful insight ever to have arrived in Internet law and one which has pervaded and informed my own work ever since. (And yes I know Reidenberg was there first , and probably others - but sometimes it takes a genius to crystalise things just right, standing on the shoulders of giants, etc etc.) I'm a little bored with CC and IP, to be absolutely honest, and it sounds like Lessig is too.

Vale atque ave; farewell and hail.

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