[A2k] Mr. Lessig goes to Washington

[srimmington@essentialinformation.org]

In this week's issue of the Nation a long profile of public
intellectual/corruption crusader Lawrence Lessig appears.

http://www.thenation.com/doc/20080616/hayes

Here is an excerpt.

In late March, Stanford law professor Lawrence Lessig came to DC to
draw back the curtain on the second act of his career. Lessig, with
his placid mien and quiet voice, does not exude the aura of a star,
but over the past decade he's become one of the most influential
public intellectuals of the Internet age. Along with a small group of
activists, legal academics and computer geeks, Lessig has built from
scratch a global grassroots movement to reform copyright and
intellectual property law. Videos of his lectures are passed along
like samizdat by bloggers. "The first time I ever saw him speak," says
Cory Doctorow, co-editor of BoingBoing, one of the country's most
popular blogs, "I remember having the doors blown off my mind." Fans
line up at events with worn copies of his books to ask for everything
from signatures to career advice. It is, in the estimation of Aaron
Swartz, a 21-year-old programming prodigy who's worked with Lessig
since 2001, "a weird kind of celebrity."


Lessig stunned his legions of fans last summer when he abruptly
announced he was walking away from the cause that had defined his
career. For the next ten years, he said, he would be focusing on a new
problem: fighting corruption in politics. So to announce his new
venture he'd come to Washington, home to what he considers the most
dangerously corrupt institution in the country: the United States
Congress. With his new netroots-style reform advocacy organization,
Change Congress, Lessig is determined to clean it up.