Julian Sanchez interviews Larry Lessig, intellectual property reform apostle and potential member of congress. Not knowing the ins-and-outs of the situation, I can't really say whether or not Lessig would serve the district better than Jackie Speier. From a national interest point of view, however, Lessig's key issues are precisely the kind of thing that are structurally off-kiler in congress. The concentrated benefits of ever-stronger IP laws mean that for members of congress there's a clear downside to bucking Big Content but no clear upside. Having a member who just so happens to be personally passionate about these issues could make a big difference.
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Lessig Interview
21 Feb 2008 09:16 am
Comments (15)
If only we could replace DiFi with Lessig in the Senate. That would be a far more appropriate forum for his intellect.
Intellectual property and digital rights have certainly defined his legal and academic life thus far, and are largely responsible for the celebrity within tech circles. The Creative Commons is justifiably celebrated as a no hassles, accessible, and effectively mainstreamed extension of the Stallman/GPL spirit (though, I'm almost certainly doing GPL, Stallman, and CC a great disservice with this overly simplistic comparison).
More importantly, Lessig understands the influence of money must be reduced in politics before a lasting progressive agenda can succeed (and thrive). What first got me so excited about Obama's canidacy -- to whom I've donated a great deal of money, and even greater share of my time -- was his dedication to patching the growing cracks in the foundation of our democracy, the slow moldy rot of corruption accumulated from 220+ years of lobbyist and special interest groups influence since the adoption of our Constitution. 'Audacity of Hope' tackled these issues head on. In his academic and legal work, and even in his blogging, Lessig advocates for these same basic reforms. Principles, transparency, honesty, and a pledge to fight for these values in Congress could be the central message of a Lessig campaign.
Lessig seems to understand the subtle moneyed incentives corrupting politics, recognizes the symptoms -- earmark spending, PACs, interest group pandering -- and seems perfectly suited to effectively communicate and tackle these problems from Congress with reforms like Change Congress, or ethics and transparency reform (similar to Obama's openspending.gov project).
From what I hear, Jackie Speier is a wonderful progressive leader herself. She has a lot to offer her district, and would be a real asset to the US Congress. Still, I think Lessig could have a profound influence in Congress, introducing genuinely unique ideas to our legislature, and to our party. I hope Lessig jumps into the fray. Even if he doesn't win, it would be a wonderful opportunity to influence the race, and spread his Change Congress message.
http://lessig.org/blog/2008/02/the_day_after.html
And this, in the end, is the most important issue for me: if I do this, I would do this because I think it is time for progressives to take a clear stand about money in politics. Too much of our rhetoric is about criticizing bad money (meaning money from corporations) while welcoming good money (money from unions, etc.) But until we shift the significance of money in the political process, we will not be able to avoid (in some cases, catastrophic) policy errors (catastrophic: global warming). Here, I believe, we should draw a line: Progressives should commit to giving up PAC/lobbyist money. And any candidate who fails to so commit should be disciplined in the way the framers imagined -- through an open, free election, where people debate and vote on the basis of their values.
It's exciting for him to run regardless.
In his first video he identifies the rigged, corrupt system of campaign finance as 'not the most important problem, but the FIRST problem'. He compares the current system to an alcoholic who is losing his job, family and liver; all are important problems, but he has to quit drinking first. More of a semantic difference than a real one in a way, but also a nice, soothing way of putting it.
It mystifies me why cleaning up the money sewer in DC is not a more popular topic among wonkish dem/progressive circles. I know some people are indeed on it, but it's mostly seen as 'boring'. But let's face it: our political system has us all in a state of mass-denial. It's as if there's this huge slowly-decaying carcass of an ogre stuck in our kitchen, blocking doorways and cupboards, necessitating complex bridge and pully systems for getting across his distended belly to the fridge, etc. etc. He makes cooking food almost impossible. Consequently we are all fat with heart disease because we eat bad food, the rotting body has produced an epidemic of disease, and it stinks to high heaven. But figuring out a way to get his ass out of there is not only unthinkable for most people, but also 'boring'. What are we thinking?
This is a big reason I was for Edwards: you have to push, now, with the coming electoral victories, for a real change in how campaigns are financed. You can do it post-Buckley, so let's just get on with it. Lessing is right, but it doesn't take a genius to figure it out. Average joe and jane know it's rigged.
BTW, Lessing says that the problem is not bad people in DC, but good people in a bad system. Not entirely true, since bad people tend to be ascendent in bad systems (ie, problems tend to be cumulative, as with the alcoholic) but basically right. There neither can nor should be a banishment of lobbyists from DC; it is anyone's right to argue their case to their government. But if you take contributions, you opponent gets a match from the government without grovelling for it (or wasting time grovelling for it).
jonnybutter,
It mystifies me why cleaning up the money sewer in DC is not a more popular topic among wonkish dem/progressive circles. I know some people are indeed on it, but it's mostly seen as 'boring'.
I think one reason people avoid it is that not many people think that it's an issue with much legs. Generally, people only care about changing the rules when they've lost something and think that unfair rules are to blame. No one cared about the "tuck rule" until the Pats beat the Raiders in that playoff game, and suddenly getting that changed was the biggest issue for Raiders fans. No one has cared much about weird delegate-allocation rules in caucuses until Obama started winning lots of delegates in caucuses, and now the Clinton campaign is complaining about it. If Superdelegates decide the nomination, the losing candidate's supporters will make reforming the Superdelegate system a big priority.
Lessig himself is a great example of this: having lost the legal fight over his side of the copyright issue, he asked himself why he lost and came up with this answer -- the game is crooked.
So in a society in which people are very suspicious of government, and aren't at all involved in voting or organizing or legislative advocacy, worrying about the arcane details of how elections are funded or about lobbying electeds seems about as relevant to Americans as some argument over changing the offside rule in soccer, or some dispute about doctoring the ball in international cricket. No one cares about the rules because no one has cared about the game.
That being said, my main issue with the Lessig view, as I understand it, is that it involves a standard goo-goo view of politics: there's some objectively-determinable "common good" that politicians would tend to advance, except their decisions are corrupted by special interests fighting for parochial desires. That's a world without ideology, and it's a fantasy. In the real world, there really are people who think Social Security is bad, or American military hegemony over the rest of the world is good. Taking away special interests won't make those people agree that the "common good" involves abandoning those views, which derive from their ideological beliefs.
The stuff Lessig wants isn't bad, it just isn't the key, first step to making government more rational or effective.
As a former resident of this district, I would be very surprised if Lessig got even 10% of the vote in a Dem primary against Speier. She's held multiple elective offices in the area going back 20+ years and she's still just in her late fifties. She's much more aligned politically with the district than Lantos was over the last few years.
The district encompasses what is now the northern part of Silicon Valley, but it's not like every voter there cares more about IP issues than bread and butter national issues. For example, until the recent troubles in the airline industry, United Airlines was the largest employer in the district, with a major maintenance facility at SFO.
As an IP lawyer myself, I'd love see Lessig's ideas out there on a bigger stage. This would be a candidacy not seeking immediate electoral success, but one seeking a bigger megaphone in the political debate.
"Common Good" might be nebulous and naïve, but I believe it can be objectively determined in some cases. Sometimes special interests do have a point, but many times they're just out to stack the rules in their favor.
Does anyone besides the various media companies believe that the Sonny Bono extension, DMCA, and 1996 Telecom Act were actually to the benefit of the rest of the nation?
So in a society in which people are very suspicious of government, and aren't at all involved in voting or organizing or legislative advocacy, worrying about the arcane details of how elections are funded..seems about as relevant to Americans as some argument over changing the offside rule in soccer,
Did I argue otherwise? I said Jane and John Q Public know the system is rigged, not exactly how it's rigged.
my main issue with the Lessig view, as I understand it, is that it involves a standard goo-goo view of politics: there's some objectively-determinable "common good" that politicians would tend to advance, except their decisions are corrupted by special interests fighting for parochial desires. That's a world without ideology, and it's a fantasy.
So money = ideology? That doesn't make sense at all, presto. I'm talking about money, not advocacy. Saying 'goo-goo' is not an argument. What we have now is 'BA-GOO'. Our current system is the very definition of corruption: a tiny bribe reaps you a hundred or thousand-fold return. That way lies entropy, eventually. Corruption predictably distorts everything. The currency of a democracy has got to be persuasion and votes - not actual currency. There can be other distortions, depending on your point of view, but it ought to be objectively clear that bribing politicians is bad.
..and as I was trying to insinuate, running against DC and the corruption therein absolutely *does* resonate with regular people, who know something funny is going on. Obama or HRC should go ahead and steal *that* page, too, from Edwards, who would've crushed in the General with it.
I was wondering why the more wonkish advocates among us find this to be a boring problem, not everyday voters.
Jackie Speier is a progressive Democrat who among other things pretty much single-handedly pushed the California privacy legislation (from the SF Chronicle: "Speier's SB1 starts with the premise that your personal financial information is your property. It will require financial institutions to obtain customer permission before selling personal information to telemarketers and other third parties. It will also, for the first time, give consumers an opportunity to restrict information-sharing within a family of companies - a critical component in this era of mega-mergers.") into law. She is also a champion of environmental issues and children's issues.
My town is gerrymandered out of the CD12 into Anna Eshoo's district but I would not vote against Speier for Lessig even though I respect him a great deal. I would certainly go out and work for Speier against him.
Holy smokes, check out Speier on wikipedia:
Speier served as a congressional staffer for Congressman Leo Ryan. Speier was part of the November 1978, fact-finding mission to investigate allegations of human rights abuses by the Reverend Jim Jones and his Peoples Temple followers in Jonestown.[2] While the investigative team was boarding the plane to leave on November 18, they were fired at by Jones' followers. Five people died, including Ryan. Speier was shot five times, waited for 22 hours for help to arrive and survived.[5] That same day many of the remaining members of Jim Jones' cult committed mass suicide/murder. Over 900 people died that day and it remains the most numerous cult mass suicide and murder (as some victims were children and others were forced to participate). The investigative trip was initiated by the father of a child member as well as other concerned family members.
...
Speier was serving in the State Assembly when her husband, Dr. Steven Sierra, was killed in a 1994 automobile accident. At the time of his death she was pregnant with their second child. She was the first member of the California Legislature to give birth while in office.
In the real world, there really are people who think Social Security is bad, or American military hegemony over the rest of the world is good.
But sometimes--frequently, even--there are facts about which people of all reasonable ideologies should agree. Even if you don't believe that government should be in the business of writing nutritional guidelines (and such an ideology already puts you in a tiny minority of the electorate), once we've resolved to write such guidelines, you would want them written well. That is, unless there was a conflict of interest between the national health and your own financial interest--like the sugar industry, for instance. To recommend that a quarter of our diet should come from sugar simply cannot be an outcome of good faith analysis starting from any reasonable ideology or assumptions. Not from libertarianism, socialism, Marxism, Christianity, Islam--from no good faith point of view at all. The only ideology that would conclude our diets should be one-quarter sugar would have to be called sucrose-ian in which what's good for Big Sugar is good for the U.S.A.. Yet somehow such recommendations were endorsed by the government. If you can't get an easy, simple, no-brainer case like this right, you can't get anything right. Thus the stuff Lessig talks about really is "the key, first step to making government more rational or effective."
I would want to hear a lot more about Lessig's free-trade, pro-market ideas before I get excited about his candidacy. He is a strong proponent of the Law and Economics school of thought, which is anathema to most liberals, but finds a home among the Federalist Society types.
Lessig might be a better advocate for IP and money-in-politics reform if he stayed out of Congress and stuck to his pet projects. His influence in attacking those issues as a Congressman will undoubtedly be weakened once Dems learn about his other views.
Greg is right on Spier-Lessig is wasting his time. She's a power house in the district and she will almost undoubtedly a congresswoman come November.
I don't want Larry Lessig in Congress. Politicians are third hand users of ideas created by long dead philosophers and turned into policy by economists a generation before. Lessig belongs far earlier in the intellectual cycle.
On the other hand, I'd really like to see him appointed to the Ninth Circuit Court Of Appeals by President (and former coworker) Obama. And when John Paul Stevens retires in a few years I'd remind everyone that modern Supremes can continue to carry on an active academic or writing career simultaneously.
Comments closed March 06, 2008.
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Heads in the Sand
I would be great to see him with even one vote out of 400+, but I worry that his bully pulpit might be smaller if he is elected, as he would have to concern himself with additional issues.
I wouldn't mind for him to get a lifetime appointment to a prominent bench for him. That might be ideal.
Posted by Matt B | February 21, 2008 9:59 AM