Lessig to Quit IP and 'Net Activism; moves on to fight corruption
Lawrence Lessig announced at the iCommons Summit in Croatia that he would be moving beyond the core issues that have consumed him for the past 15 years. Instead, he will focus his mind and energies on more general and all-consuming problems that are endemic to our current state of politics, policy, and law. They all fall under the rubric of corruption. Larry writes:
... The answer is a kind of corruption of the political process. Or better, a "corruption" of the political process. I don't mean corruption in the simple sense of bribery. I mean "corruption" in the sense that the system is so queered by the influence of money that it can't even get an issue as simple and clear as term extension right. Politicians are starved for the resources concentrated interests can provide. In the US, listening to money is the only way to secure reelection. And so an economy of influence bends public policy away from sense, always to dollars.
The point of course is not new. Indeed, the fear of factions is as old as the Republic. There are thousands who are doing amazing work to make clear just how corrupt this system has become. There have been scores of solutions proposed. This is not a field lacking in good work, or in people who can do this work well.
But a third person -- this time anonymous -- made me realize that I wanted to be one of these many trying to find a solution to this "corruption." This man, a Republican of prominence in Washington, wrote me a reply to an email I had written to him about net neutrality. As he wrote, "And don't shill for the big guys protecting market share through neutrality REGULATION either."
"Shill."
If you've been reading these pages recently, you'll know my allergy to that word. But this friend's use of the term not to condemn me, but rather as play, made me recognize just how general this corruption is. Of course he would expect I was in the pay of those whose interests I advanced. Why else would I advance them? Both he and I were in a business in which such shilling was the norm. It was totally reasonable to thus expect that money explained my desire to argue with him about public policy.
I don't want to be a part of that business. And more importantly, I don't want this kind of business to be a part of public policy making. We've all been whining about the "corruption" of government forever. We all should be whining about the corruption of professions too. But rather than whining, I want to work on this problem that I've come to believe is the most important problem in making government work.
And so as I said at the top (in my "bottom line"), I have decided to shift my academic work, and soon, my activism, away from the issues that have consumed me for the last 10 years, towards a new set of issues: Namely, these. "Corruption" as I've defined it elsewhere will be the focus of my work. For at least the next 10 years, it is the problem I will try to help solve. ...
Bravo, Larry. I completely understand this move. We are lucky to have you fighting the good fight.
Comments
Two party winner-take-all systems are inherently corrupt. I hope he directs his energies towards moving the nation into a multi-party system where parties have meaningful differences and coalition building is required to get things done. I wish our nation had something like this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cumulative_voting
My fear is that he will champion band-aid approaches a la McCain-Feingold which tend to encourage new layers of corruption.
Posted by: Jardinero1![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://www.nyu.edu/classes/siva/nav-commenters.gif)
|
June 20, 2007 08:45 PM