IndexCareer Overview. In addition to teaching, Lessig has been a columnist for numerous publications: Major Litigation.Organizations.Laurels.Other awards include: Conclusion. Cyberlaw is a relatively new area of ​​telecommunications law and policy, where technology and law intersect. From controversies over intellectual property rights, free speech, fair use, and other issues has emerged a voice described as the "Paul Revere of the Web" (Mullaney & Greene). Lawrence Lessig is both an intellectual and an activist, a constitutional scholar and original thinker who has a huge following not only in academic circles but also in the popular press and the web registers of cyber geeks and Internet activists. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an Original Essay Career Overview. Lessig was born in 1961 in South Dakota, but at an early age his family moved to Williamsport, Pennsylvania. Intellectually gifted, he was passionate about politics and enjoyed computers as a hobby. He earned a bachelor's degree in economics and a bachelor's degree in management (from the Wharton School) from the University of Pennsylvania in 1983. Three years later he graduated cum laude from Trinity College with a master's degree in philosophy. In 1989 he completed his studies at Yale Law School. Now popularly known as a "liberal," Lessig had been a staunch Republican since high school, and began his career as a protégé of rather conservative judges. In 1989 he worked for Judge Richard Posner, in the United States. Court of Appeals, Seventh Circuit, and the following year became clerk to Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia. An itinerant scholar early in his career, Lessig bounced from school to school during a period that included a stint at Budapest College, Hungary (1992-94). In the United States he taught at Yale Law School (1995); at the University of Chicago (1991-1997) where he obtained a professorship; and at Harvard Law School (1997-2000), where he was the Jack N. and Lillian R. Berkman Professor for Entrepreneurial Legal Studies (1998). Currently, Lessig is a professor of law and (since 2003) John A. Wilson Distinguished Faculty Scholar at Stanford University (2000 to present), where he teaches courses on constitutional, open source, patent, and contracts law. In addition to teaching, Lessig has been a columnist for numerous publications: Industry Standard (1998-2001) CIO Insight (2002-03) Red Herring (2002-03) He currently writes for Wired Magazine (since 2003). He has also served on the boards of numerous organizations related to cyber law issues such as freedom of expression and intellectual property rights: Redhat Center for the Public Domain Software Freedom Law Center Free Software Foundation Electronic Frontier Foundation Creative Commons (co- founder) Prominent Publications. Lessig was a prolific writer, producing four books, 61 articles and 90 essays. He has presented papers and/or spoken at over 200 seminars, conferences and workshops worldwide. With the publication of Code: And Other Laws of Cyberspace in 1999, Lessig summarized many of his writings on software code as having the force of law. At that time the Internet was (and is) seen as a non-regulatory space of freedom. Lessig, however, demonstrated that in cyberspace, as in real life, actors are constrained and regulated by law, market, and architecture (i.e., code). But at the same time these four ways can protect the actor from harm resulting from three others. Companies are designing the architecture of cyberspace to violate free speech, privacy,competition, and the courts and legislatures must intervene, but only to the extent that they change the architecture to make it more like what the Internet was originally intended for. “If the architecture is right, there is less need for government to intervene to protect values ​​or perfect competition” (qtd. in Mullany & Greene). The publication of Code established Lessig as a leader in cyberlaw and confirmed his conversion from the American right wing to the left, although, as the quote above illustrates, it would be an oversimplification to say that he is firmly in favor of government regulation. As The Future of Ideas (200X) makes clear, in the areas of intellectual property rights and spectrum allocation he favors less government control, with some exceptions. He argues that the government should prevent companies from using legal and technical means (such as copyright abuse) to stifle creativity and destroy the innovation commons that is the Internet. The Future of Ideas concludes with a call to action to prevent the Internet from falling under the control of Big Media. Lessig refines both his ideas and his activism in his third book, Free Culture. In this monograph he analyzes the tensions between the free exchange of ideas on the one hand and intellectual property rights on the other. He argues that we are in danger of losing large numbers of works through overstretching of copyright law, and discusses in detail his experiences and mistakes in Eldrich v. Ashcroft (see Major Litigation, below). Free Culture is Lessig's first book to be published under the Creative Commons license, a flexible alternative to copyright (see Organizations for more information, below), and as such is available in hardback format from Penguin Books or for free. The book inspired Nelson Pavlovsky to found the Free Culture movement at Swarthmore College in 2004 (Lessig spoke at its inauguration). Major Litigation. In addition to his writings, Lessig has gained fame by participating in several court cases both as a consultant and as amicus curiae. , as an expert witness or (rarely) as an attorney. Two cases in particular have sparked much controversy and attracted press attention, and are particularly representative of Lessig's philosophy and work: Eldred v. Ashcroft (2003) and United States v. Microsoft (1997-2002). The United States Department of Justice (DOJ), along with twenty states, sued Microsoft for violations of the Sherman Anti-Trust Act. The Justice Department alleged that Microsoft had abused its monopoly power by merging its Windows operating system and its Explorer web browser and modifying application programming interfaces (APIs) to favor Explorer, thus crushing the competition. The presiding judge, Thomas Penfield Jackson, appointed Lessig as special master, who gave him the authority to evaluate technical data, interview witnesses and, above all, make recommendations. Lessig also testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee. Microsoft's lawyers objected to his appointment and said he was biased. They referenced his writings on coding, and decontextualized a remark Lessig had made in an email after noticing that installing Explorer had deleted his bookmarks: "Sold my soul and Nothing happened" (qtd . in Levy, p. 8). It is curious that their opinion is so strong, because in his amicus curiae brief filed in 1999, Lessig did not take sides that combining an operating system and a browser product constituted a violation of the Sherman Act. Rather, wrote that the Court did not consider the connection of twosoftware products, particularly an operating system and a browser product, due to a “fetishism” of software code that mistakenly places design evaluation “solely beyond the reach of federal courts” (p. 7). The Microsoft case pushed Lessig to take a more activist stance. The Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act of 1998 (CTEA) extends all copyrights for an additional twenty years, 50 to 70 years after the author's death, or 75 to 95 years thereafter. the case of the works of a company. Not coincidentally, Congress passed the CTEA just as Walt Disney's 1928 "Steamboat Willie," the first cartoon with sound, was about to enter the public domain. Meanwhile, Eric Eldred, a retired programmer, who in 1995 had started a website to make works in the public domain easily accessible to the world, wanted to include works by Frost that would have entered the public domain if not for CTEA. Feeling strongly that it was a constitutional issue, Lessig argued Eldred's case before the Supreme Court in October 2002. In "How I Lost the Big One", Lessig wryly laments that the CTEA is more harmful not to Frost or Disney , which work easily available to anyone who wants to read or view them. Rather, he writes, “The real harm is to works that are not famous, not commercially exploited, and consequently no longer available” (np), because only a fraction of the works of human effort have commercial value. Ironically, digitally archiving a book means copying it and therefore violating copyright, greatly hindering mass accessibility. As a result, Lessig proposed the Copyright Deregulation Act, also known as the Eldred Act. This law would impose a modest tax on the copyright owner fifty years after a work is published. If unpaid for three years, the work would enter the public domain. Eldrich v. Ashcroft and Lessig's proposal inspired a "Save Orphan Works" social movement. Organizations. Not just a man of letters, Lessig is a man of action, founding two organizations: one academic and research-oriented, the other a practical solution to the problems he described in his books and encountered in his practice. As part of the Law Science and Technology Program at Stanford Law School, Lessig founded the Center for Internet Society (CIS) in 2000 to bring together researchers from academia, industry, and government on cyberlaw issues. The website describes the center as a "public interest" program that promotes democratic values ​​(http://cyberlaw.stanford.edu/about/). The center will also represent clients in legal proceedings and provide public educational forums. The following year, Lessig co-founded the nonprofit organization Creative Commons in 2001 — along with Eric Eldred, fellow lawyer James Boyle, filmmaker Guggenheim, and others — to promote the sharing and building of ideas. In 2002 the organization proclaimed its namesake license to provide a more flexible copyright alternative that sits between the all-or-nothing provided by current copyright structures. In other words, while a full copyright reserves all rights and the public domain reserves no rights, the Creative Commons License (CCL) reserves some rights. The CCL allows the author to combine four conditions to create eleven licenses (because some conditions are mutually exclusive). Interestingly, Creative Commons and CIS currently work closely together. Laurels.Lessig has received numerous awards and recognition throughout his illustrious career. In 2002, the Free Software Foundation (FSF) awarded Lessig its Award for the Advancement of Free Software. Two years later, Lessig began serving on the board of directors of the FSF. Others.