Government corruption affects all aspects of society. At the 2008 O'Reilly ETech Conference, Lawrence Lessig discusses government corruption, especially in the United States Congress. What does government get right, wrong, and where does dependence compromise effective government? Also, Lessig announces a new project designed to signal congress' support for reform, called Change Congress.
The United States Government, like those all over the world, has hard cases and easy cases to deal with. Lessig aims his criticism at those easy cases that the US government consistently gets wrong: copyright, nutrition, global warming. Lessig examines why there is trouble getting elected representatives to see reason and make correct choices on easy public policy questions.
US congress bares the brunt of much of Lessig's criticism, and in order to foster change in the congressional institution, Lessig unveils a new project called Change Congress. Where congress is an in-crowd focussed obsessively at keeping things as they are, Change Congress makes reform of congress something congressional candidates can commit to in order to encourage change.
Lawrence Lessig is a Professor of Law at Stanford Law School and founder of the school's Center for Internet and Society. Prior to joining the Stanford faculty, he was the Berkman Professor of Law at Harvard Law School. Lessig is the author of The Future of Ideas and Code and Other Laws of Cyberspace. He also chairs the Creative Commons project. Professor Lessig is a board member of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a Board Member of the Center for the Public Domain, and a Commission Member of the Penn National Commission on Society, Culture and Community at the University of Pennsylvania.
Lessig teaches and writes in the areas of constitutional law, contracts, comparative constitutional law, and the law of cyberspace. He is currently planning a course, Law and Virtual Worlds, for Spring 2003 with Julian Dibbell.
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