Lawrence Lessig's Blog, page 16

A Reply to Congressman Conyers

Mr. Conyers says I "cross the line." He says I label his motivations for introducing this bill as "corrupt," that I accuse him of "shilling," and that I "dismiss" his bill as nothing more than a "money for influence scheme." On the basis of this "one piece of legislation," he says I have waved away "forty years of fighting against special interests." He insists that he has "earned a bit more of the benefit of the doubt" and "that there is far more to the 'open access' story than [my:] muckrackin

Representative Conyers speaks

Read it here. I've got a father-in-law's 70th birthday, and a reply brief to complete before a response. But stay tuned (and pitch in if you can).

Speak now, Mr. Conyers, or withdraw this embarrassment of a bill

On the Huffington Post, Mike Eisen and I have asked Mr. Conyers to respond to the calls that he withdraw the embarrassing, anti-open access HR 801 (aka, the Fair Copyright in Research Works Act). We've gotten tons of responses from people who have followed our request to call Conyers and other co-sponsors to ask about this. I'm grateful for the help to stop this mistake of a bill. I'd be even more grateful if more were to join the strike to change the economy of influence in DC that produces thi

Earmark reform

Herein brews perhaps the first important battle of reform for this President. I have long thought the President should resign his membership in the Democratic Party -- not because he doesn't or shouldn't share the values of the Democratic Party, but because it is time we recognize we need a President above either partisanship (which got us the "Contract with America") or bipartisanship (which got us the Iraq War). But Hoyer's behavior here makes the point most starkly.

Earmarks are a cancer: Not

FairShare launches

Identify your Creative Commons content to FairShare, a project of Attributor, and the service will track and report how content is being used on the web. The service is free and the technology (Attributor) is amazing. Watch (to understand or for those who want, to profit) free content spread.

Me @ Google RE: CHANGE CONGRESS

John Conyers and Open Access

The Huffington Post is running a piece about H.R. 801 (the "Fair Copyright in Research Works Act"), the latest version of John Conyers' awful idea. The law would forbid entities like the NIH from requiring that recipients of government grants make the product of their research openly accessible. (The current practice requires articles be freely accessible after 12 months.) Instead, Conyers' proposal would require that after the American taxpayer has paid for the research, the American taxpayer m

Caving into bullies (aka, here we go again)

[image error]

Amazon has caved into demands from the Authors Guild that it disable the ability of the Kindle to read a book aloud. This is very bad news.

We had this battle before. In 2001, Adobe released e-book technology that gave rights holders (including publishers of public domain books) the ability to control whether the Adobe e-book reader read the book aloud. The story got famous when it was shown that one of its public domain works -- Alice's Adventures in Wonderland -- was marked to forbid the book

Carl should head the GPO

Join the campaign.

Jeff Flake is right

Jeff Flake (AZ-6, Republican) has introduced a resolution to call for an investigation about the relationship between earmarks and campaign funding. Having just finished Kaiser's amazing book, So Damn Much Money, I am confirmed in a suspicion I had before the election: that Flake/McCain were right to be so exercised about earmarks, and Obama/Dems were wrong.

The point is not the total amount of earmarks. Indeed, for a liberal like me, I'm keen to see the government spend money (wisely, at least)