Stanford University law professor, Lawrence Lessig, officially departs from the intellectual property debate. His new area of study is corruption.
I can’t honestly say it’s a big loss. Whomever wrote CopyCense: On Lessig ought to be the new “torchbearer.” They get it.
Lessig has proclaimed before that he was retiring from focusing on intellectual property, and like the rapper Jay-Z and too many boxers, he did not walk away. His latest series of writings on his blog, however, suggest he is, in fact, ready to step out the door.
… We also think the litigation team Lessig lead in the Eldred v. Ashcroft case seriously depersonalized the case into a strictly legal argument that was hard to win. We have opined often that the only way federal courts are going to change their holdings in copyright cases is if the debate is less about economics and law, and more about the simple fact that people — individuals — are getting screwed.
… inside the courtroom, Lessig’s argument generally failed to make apparent what we’ve heard him make apparent in other venues: Disney’s manipulation of the term extension issue means that a 10-year-old girl in Iowa can’t come up with the next great animated character because Disney wants to shackle culture to stuff its wallets. (To be fair, Lessig has conceded he made strategic errors in the Eldred litigation.)
