I first heard of Lawrence Lessig because of his work with the Free Software Foundation, and the Electronic Freedom Foundation, both of which have subtly but profoundly changed my chosen industry for the better over the last twenty or so years. Mr Lessig has also worked to keep art and creativity from becoming a thing of the past. If new artists cant build upon the culture they live in without paying the corporations who hold the copyrights on that culture, then culture becomes a product, the expression of a board room rather than the expression of a people. Mr. Lessig founded the Creative Commons to use the internet to provide a place and a framework where creativity could be shared to the degree and extent its creators desire. He also argued in the Supreme Court that our current practice of regularly extending the term of copyright each time the the current set of copyrights are about to expire creates an effective permanent monopoly, instead of the temporary monopoly that our constitution requires. Unfortunately the Court failed to see this, and choose only to support Congresses right to create laws as fit the needs of Congresses benefactors. The laws of our country, especially the high level ones like copyright law, have a profound effect on our daily lives, and the future of our democracy. Mr. Lessigs current effort is against the corrupting influence of large anonymous donations on political campaigns. His plan is to use a huge number of small public donations to sway elections in the direction of candidates who are committed to campaign finance reform in this direction. No matter what you believe in socio-politically, I know you are in favor of having elections be about more than advertising and smear campaigns. I also know some of you are, even now, rising to the challenge of arguing against this statement. Please resist that urge, just for a moment. Instead checkout the Mayday.us organization, learn about the issue, and decide if you are for or against them, and if you still have the will to care. Then decide what you are going to do about it. https://mayday.us/
Posted on: Sat, 28 Jun 2014 21:49:34 +0000
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