Lawrence Lessig (born June 3, 1961) is a professor of law at Stanford Law School and founder of its Center for Internet and Society.

Prior to joining Stanford he taught at the Harvard Law School and the University of Chicago Law School. Although considered a liberal, he clerked for strongly conservative Judge Richard Posner and Justice Antonin Scalia. He was educated at Wharton School of Business, Trinity College, Cambridge, and Yale Law School.

In 2002, Lessig was awarded the FSF Award for the Advancement of Free Software from the Free Software Foundation (FSF), and on March 28 2004 he was elected to the FSF's Board of Directors.[1] (http://agia.fsf.org/associate/leadership/) Lessig is also a well-known critic of copyright term extensions.

He proposed the concept of "Free Culture" [2] (http://randomfoo.net/oscon/2002/lessig/). He also supports free software and open spectrum [3] (http://cyberlaw.stanford.edu/spectrum/). He is founder and chairman of the Creative Commons and a board member of the EFF.

At his "Free culture" keynote at OSCON 2002, half of his speech was also about software patents, which he views as a rising threat to both open source and innovation.

Lessig is on the board of directors of Software Freedom Law Center, launched in February 2005.

Notable cases involving Lessig

• Eldred v. Ashcroft He represented the plaintiff Eric Eldred
• Kahle v. Ashcroft See Brewster Kahle and [4] (http://cyberlaw.stanford.edu/about/cases/kahle_v_ashcroft.shtml#002043)
• Golan v. Ashcroft See [5] (http://cyberlaw.stanford.edu/about/cases/golan_v_ashcroft.shtml)
• United States v. Microsoft Amicus Curiae. At the Court’s request he submitted a brief addressing the Sherman Act. See [6] (http://www.lessig.org/content/testimony/ab/ab.pdf)
• MPAA v. 2600 Submitted an Amicus Curiae together with Yochai Benkler in support of 2600. See [7] (http://www.lessig.org/content/testimony/dvd/dvd.pdf)

Books authored

• Code and Other Laws of Cyberspace (2000)
• The Future of Ideas (2001)
• Free Culture (2004). Lessig released this work under the Creative Commons License: Attribution-NonCommercial. See [8] (http://free-culture.org/freecontent/)

External links

• Lawrence Lessig's web site (http://www.lessig.org/)
• Transcript (http://www.supremecourtus.gov/oral_arguments/argument_transcripts/01-618.pdf) and Court Opinion (http://www.supremecourtus.gov/opinions/02pdf/01-618.pdf) for Eldred v. Ashcroft
• 2002 FSF Award for the Advancement of Free Software (http://www.gnu.org/award/2002/2002.html)
• "Free Culture" keynote (http://lessig.org/freeculture/) from OSCON 2002 (including an audio recording and a flash animation with the recording of his presentation as well as the presentation itself)
• coverage of Lessig's opposition to the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act (http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/10.10/lessig.html?pg=5)
• Some Like It Hot essay by Lessig in Wired 12.03 excerpted from Free Culture: How Big Media Uses Technology and the Law to Lock Down Culture and Control Creativity (http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/12.03/lessig_pr.html)
• a lot of links to speeches (http://wiki.ael.be/index.php/LawrenceLessig) are on his wiki.ael.be page
• How I Lost The Big One (http://www.legalaffairs.org/issues/March-April-2004/story_lessig_marapr04.html) - Lessig's account of why the Eldred v. Ashcroft case went to Ashcroft

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