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November 04, 2008
A Message From Lawrence Lessig Today: An Urgent Plea

Lawrence published this message last night from New Zealand:
Winning Tuesday: An urgent plea to Obama supporters
.

I awoke in New Zealand today to an article in the New Zealand Herald, and I had a strange sense of deja vu. It is still Monday in America. And like the Monday before the 2004 election, and the Monday before the 2000 election, there is enormous confidence among Democrats that we are going to win this.

But as with 2000, and 2004, I have become a bit terrified about where
we'll be Tuesday. For as presented by the New Zealand Herald, however
optimistic the static view of the swing states is, the dynamic view —
what is the trend — is sobering, to say the least. As this graph
shows, only Florida is trending in the right direction. Every other
critical state is trending away from Obama.

Now of course, maybe not quickly enough. Of course, the advantages are
significant, especially relative to 2004. And of course, McCain would
have to move mountains to overcome the enormous machine that the Obama
campaign has built.

But here's the weird deja vu I feel. In 2004, I got on a plane Tuesday
to fly to London. When I got on the plane, I watched every pundit, as
well as Kerry's daughter, speak about how all the polls were with
Kerry. The "exit polls" indicated a clear Kerry victory. But then when
I landed, I sat it utter disbelief in the United lounge at Heathrow,
watching the Ohio numbers go against us, and therefore, delivering 4
more years to Bush.

We Democrats have trouble closing the deal. We have trouble continuing
the push to the very last moment. We have repeatedly been blindsided
by the fact that the other side votes regardless of the expected
result, while we're more contingent — making the effort if it seems
necessary, relaxing when it doesn't.

Please, don't let this happen again. Please, if you're an Obama
supporter, do absolutely everything you can in the next 24 hours to
make sure every single possible Obama vote turns out to vote...

There is an energy I have never imagined could be behind any
politician. I have known for more than a decade that this man is the
real deal. And it gives me enormous hope for this democracy that we
are about to vote to make him President.

Unless we don't. Unless we let this slip by, again. Unless we sit in
our comfortable cubicle, and let politics be run by the other side.

Don't do this. Do something this time. Please at least help spread
this message. Make sure everyone who could matter here knows what you
believe. And don't stop until the clock runs out.

Here is the full text of the entire post:
http://lessig.org/blog/2008/11/winning_tuesday_an_urgent_plea.html

Winning Tuesday: An urgent plea to Obama supporters
November 3, 2008 10:46 PM - comments (13)

I awoke in New Zealand today to an article in the New Zealand Herald,
and I had a strange sense of deja vu. It is still Monday in America.
And like the Monday before the 2004 election, and the Monday before
the 2000 election, there is enormous confidence among Democrats that
we are going to win this.

But as with 2000, and 2004, I have become a bit terrified about where
we'll be Tuesday. For as presented by the New Zealand Herald, however
optimistic the static view of the swing states is, the dynamic view —
what is the trend — is sobering, to say the least. As this graph
shows, only Florida is trending in the right direction. Every other
critical state is trending away from Obama.

Now of course, maybe not quickly enough. Of course, the advantages are
significant, especially relative to 2004. And of course, McCain would
have to move mountains to overcome the enormous machine that the Obama
campaign has built.

But here's the weird deja vu I feel. In 2004, I got on a plane Tuesday
to fly to London. When I got on the plane, I watched every pundit, as
well as Kerry's daughter, speak about how all the polls were with
Kerry. The "exit polls" indicated a clear Kerry victory. But then when
I landed, I sat it utter disbelief in the United lounge at Heathrow,
watching the Ohio numbers go against us, and therefore, delivering 4
more years to Bush.

We Democrats have trouble closing the deal. We have trouble continuing
the push to the very last moment. We have repeatedly been blindsided
by the fact that the other side votes regardless of the expected
result, while we're more contingent — making the effort if it seems
necessary, relaxing when it doesn't.

Please, don't let this happen again. Please, if you're an Obama
supporter, do absolutely everything you can in the next 24 hours to
make sure every single possible Obama vote turns out to vote.
Volunteer for a phone bank, or use my.barackobama.com to phone bank
from home. And beyond this, do the sort of things that too few of us
ever have the courage to do: Express to your friends, and anyone you
know, why you want them to support your candidate. Send an email with
a personal story, or an argument important to you, to as many people
as you can. Apologize for the intrusion, but intrude nonetheless. (How
weird is it that engaging people about democratic issues in a
democracy is generally viewed as inappropriate). And don't let up
until 8pm Pacific time.

I'm doing this. I'm exhorting you. I'm writing to everyone on my
twitter/facebook/indenti.ca/flickr lists. If I can find an smtp server
that will let me, I'll dump an email to as many of my friends as I can
telling them they this is so important. And when my plane lands in the
US Tuesday morning, I will join my wife (who is running a phone bank
in San Francisco), spending the day on the phone). I will mark myself
as weird in doing all this, no doubt. But we can all afford this, if
only just once in our life.

I understand the other side has their reasons. I respect them, even if
I disagree with them. But I am genuinely afraid about what happens to
our side if we let this slip away. There is enormous energy and
passion among young people for Obama. There is a passion and hope that
makes me cry each time I think about it among African Americans, and
those who think about and live the discrimination of our past, and
present. There is an energy I have never imagined could be behind any
politician. I have known for more than a decade that this man is the
real deal. And it gives me enormous hope for this democracy that we
are about to vote to make him President.

Unless we don't. Unless we let this slip by, again. Unless we sit in
our comfortable cubicle, and let politics be run by the other side.

Don't do this. Do something this time. Please at least help spread
this message. Make sure everyone who could matter here knows what you
believe. And don't stop until the clock runs out.

Posted by Lisa at 06:29 AM
March 15, 2005
Lessig On West Wing

Man I hate to even link to this, because it's such crap. But I was as curious as the next guy, and Aaron Snitzer was nice enough to send me the clip, so
here it is.

(Please download it to your hard drive and watch it, due to my current bandwidth restrictions. And somebody, make a torrent file right away :-) Update: Here's the torrent - thanks to Ask Bjørn Hansen!

And now, a brief rant about what a sorry-excuse-for-a-portrayal-of-larry-lessig this is. I haven't read anything that Larry's written on his blog about it yet, but I'm sure, due to his tendency for tact, he didn't say what I really needed to be said.

Well I haven't gone off on anything for a while, so here goes:

They've got Larry as a stuffy 60-year old pompus ass -- kiss ass that is -- as his staff watches in disbelief (he's got more important things to do, apparently), the President takes five minutes of his valuable time to shoot the shit about a topic that he otherwise doesn't think about much: the constitution.

Whoever cast and directed Christopher Lloyd (disclaimer: Christopher, I love you. You're a great actor, and I know you were just doing your job. This is not meant as a personal attack on you in any way!)
could have at least watched a single minute of one of the billions of videos of Larry that are online in order to get his look and accent correctly. (When did Larry pick up that Masterpiece Theatre accent? I guess all of us constitution-lovers talk like we're in I Claudius all the time while spending our time hanging around important people, hoping to be taken seriously.)

The idea that Larry is some old man who hangs around leaders hoping to have esoteric conversations couldn't be further from the truth. Larry is a 40-something spring chicken who is up to his neck in current events -- like the current and relevant dilemma we happen to be in regarding our constitution being used as toilet paper by the current administration.

And he's doing this in the courts -- not by hanging around presidents that couldn't give a shit, trying to convince them of anything. Or travelling around the world, waiting for constitutions to be written (since there's no hope for ours anymore).

Making him 20 years older was a nice touch. It lets us know that West Wing didn't even spend five minutes fact checking. We're lucky they got his name right!

OK I'm done now. Go see this crap for yourself.

Sorry Larry, but it's still (historically-inaccurate-unresearched-tv) history, and, for that reason, it belongs in the archive.

I hope you at least sold a few more books when it was all over. They did at least plug the book! Thank god for small favors.

Posted by Lisa at 07:53 AM
March 10, 2005
Does Anyone Have The Lessig West Wing Episode?

Hi guys,

I'm trying to locate either a small clip or the entire West Wing episode where Larry Lessig is portrayed.

I've been contacted by a lot of folks looking for it, and I'd love to have it in the library, so please gimmie a ping if you have it and we can coordinate getting me a copy so I can make it available for everyone.

thanks!

lisa

lisarein@finetuning.com

Posted by Lisa at 10:21 AM
February 11, 2004
Video And Audio Of Party From "Meet Ro Khanna" Party At Larry Lessig's House

Larry Lessig threw a party at his house Monday night for Congressional Candidate Ro Khanna.

Here's the audio and video from the party.

The files are named so you can tell what they are. They include introductions by Larry Lessig and Jeff Bleich, Ro's speech, a clip of Ro talking about the Patriot Act, and Ro conducting and Q and A session after his speech. The "all" files contain everything.


Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons License.


Posted by Lisa at 04:58 PM
July 17, 2003
ILAW 2003 - Day 2 - July 1, 2003 AM 2 Of 2 - Lawrence Lessig On The Importance Of The Web's End To End Architecture

The most important point:


End to end character of the web.

How this was a design choice.

Intelligence is at the edges. Network is simple.

Dominant monopoly can't control/discriminate.
Can't see who people are.
Can't forbid certain uses.

This was a fundamental architectural choice.


Larry On End-to-End - Part 1 of 4
(Small - 69 MB)

Larry On End-to-End - Part 2 of 4
(Small - 59 MB)

Larry On End-to-End - Part 3 of 4
(Small - 81 MB)

Larry On End-to-End - Part 4 of 4
(Small - 74 MB)























Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons License.



day 2 tape 3

Larry On End to End Architecture

The end to end character of the logical layer

2:26 - Difference Between AM and FM Radio

4:15 - How Sarnoff Tried to...

AM/FM Radio Backrounder

David Sarnoff vs. Armstrong and RCA

Packet Switching

How AT & T discriminated against any ideas that wouldn't benefit their monopoly.

How competition can be crushed by the dominant network provider.

Excite/AT&T - Dominant cable provider
"Blood sucked from our veins"

9:30 - Innovations that gave birth to the internet

10:50 - All by kids and non-americans

11:52 - Policies and Consequences of Architecture

12:08 - End to end character of the web. How this was a design choice.

Intelligence is at the edges. Network is simple.

Dominant monopoly can't control/discriminate.
Can't see who people are.
Can't forbid certain uses.
This was a fundamental architectural choice.

23:14 - Hourglass model
Note to transcribe some of this...

26:20 - voice over IP

32:15 - Commons - What is a commons

33:30 - Tragedy of the commons

34:30 - rivalrous and non-rivalrous resources

39:40 - Innovation Commons

41:40 - Why the property model makes no sense on the Internet.

How it just doesn't make sense to propertize all resources.

44:35 - Strategic behavior

Competitors do things that benefits them but harms the network

45:40 - Microsoft case - defensive manipulation - note to highlight this

MS stops around 52:00

54:20 - consumer-financial innovation

57:20 - unlicensed spectrum

Day 2 Tape 4

8:00 Media Consolidation

11:00 How the Internet needs to run like the electric network

he mentions my weblog around 12:00

16:20 - Neutral Networks (Note: not "neural" but "neutral"

22:00 - Q and A - why complexity is bad

note: after this point, the numbers are iffy...

27:13 - when property rights aren't appropriate

28:29 - Eldred economists amicus brief - "no brainer."

32:00 - maybe "commons" isn't the right word

not either or but a balance between property and FREE

Eldred wanted to publish his annotated Robert Frost poems.

Note from lisa: people are always asking me what the work was that Eric Eldred was waiting to fall into the public domain that originally brought about the court case. The answer is "Robert Frost poems."

Posted by Lisa at 08:14 AM
July 09, 2003
ILAW 2003 - Day 1 - June 30, 2003 - PM 1 of 2 - Lawrence Lessig and Jonathan Zittrain On Jurisdiction

In this session, Larry and Jonathan tag team in order to play devil's advocate across an array of Jurisdictional issues, using the situation of accessing porn over the internet and all of the case law surrounding it as the basis for discussion.

Ack! These links were bad this am - should be fixed now!
Lessig and Zittrain - Day 1 - Part 1 of 5 (Small - 53 MB)
Lessig and Zittrain - Day 1 - Part 2 of 5 (Small - 51 MB)
Lessig and Zittrain - Day 1 - Part 3 of 5 (Small - 51 MB)
Lessig and Zittrain - Day 1 - Part 4 of 5 (Small - 50 MB)
Lessig and Zittrain - Day 1 - Part 5 of 5 (Small - 53 MB)













Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons License.


Posted by Lisa at 11:41 AM
July 08, 2003
ILAW 2003 - Day 1 - June 30, 2003 - AM 2 of 2 - Lawrence Lessig - Regulation In Meatspace and Cyberspace

About these notes and videos -- how the files are named, etc.

Here's Lessig's own description of the Monday morning sessions:

"The point (of Jonathan's session) is to layout some framework for the technology. And the objective of this second part of the morning is to lay out the framework about how to think through these questions of regulation in the context of cyberspace by thinking through a little bit about the question of regulation in real space."

Larry June 30 - Part 1 of 4 (Small - 81 MB)
Larry June 30 - Part 2 of 4 (Small - 81 MB)
Larry June 30 - Part 3 of 4 (Small - 41 MB)
Larry June 30 - Part 4 of 4 (Small - 45 MB)

















Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons License.


Posted by Lisa at 12:18 PM
June 26, 2003
Transcripts From Samuelson Clinic DRM Panel With Lawrence Lessig and Ed Felten

Here's a transcript of the panel I provided the video of (1-Ed, 2-Larry, 3-Q and A).

Posted by Lisa at 06:06 PM
June 21, 2003
Q and A With Felten and Lessig At Law And Tech of DRM 2003 Panel

Here's the Q and A session that followed the presentations I posted earlier from Felten and Lessig.

It's full of the usual jewels of wisdom and insight that tend to show up when these two are around. Plus, food for thought from Hal Albeson and Hewlett-Packard's John Erickson.

Q and A With Felten, Lessig, Albeson and Erickson - Part 1 of 2 (Small - 16 MB)

Q and A With Felten, Lessig, Albeson and Erickson Part 2 of 2 (Small - 12 MB)

Here's a transcript.

Posted by Lisa at 02:25 PM
June 13, 2003
Lawrence Lessig Talks About Brewster And The Internet Archive

This is just a little clip I excerpted from Lessig's complete SXSW 2003 presentation:

Lessig On The Internet Archive (Small - 5 MB)

Lessig On The Internet Archive (Hi-res - 60 MB)

Audio - Lessig On The Internet Archive (MP3 - 4 MB)




Public Domain Dedication

This work is dedicated to the
Public Domain. (Take it and run, baby!)

Posted by Lisa at 10:15 PM
June 10, 2003
Lawrence Lessig At Law And Technology Of DRM 2003

Larry explains why he feels we need to reframe the problem of DRM because a lot of really smart people have been working on it "forever" to no avail. He talks about the three kinds of copyright holders out there: those who want "none" "some" or "all" of their rights protected and the different ways in which Creative Commons addresses the needs of the "somes" and "nones" that have been virtually ignored up until now.

He also talks a bit about the Eldred case.

Lawrence Lessig - Part 1 of 2 (Small - 16 MB)
Lawrence Lessig - Part 2 of 2 (Small - 15 MB)

Lawrence Lessig - Complete (Small - 31 MB)

No Hi-res at this time - Coming soon...

Audio - Lawrence Lessig - Complete (MP3 - 20 MB)

Here's a transcript.









Public Domain Dedication

This work is dedicated to the
Public Domain. (Take it and run, baby!)

Posted by Lisa at 03:36 PM
May 29, 2003
Lawrence Lessig At SXSW 2003 - Audio and Video Files

Better late than never!

As promised, here are MP3s, "small" and high resolution videos of Lessig's Sunday, March 9, 2003 presentation at SXSW 2003.

Please see the notes below each clip regarding its contents.
(Parts 1-3 of the MP3 don't match the Parts 1-3 of the "smalls," for instance.)
The notes will help you figure it out.

The Q and A clips that are available on their own have the questions edited out to save on file sizes. (And since my camera wasn't able to pick up the questions anyway.)

Lessig's answers make it pretty clear what the questions were.

I have dedicated this work to the Public Domain.








The Presentation and part of the Q and A in "Small" web video files in 3 Parts, plus a separate file of the Q and A:

Lessig At SXSW 2003 - Part 1 of 3 (Small - 11 MB)
(Includes first half of presentation.)

Lessig At SXSW 2003 - Part 2 of 3 (Small - 14 MB)
(Includes second half of presentation and first half of Q and A.)

Lessig At SXSW 2003 - Part 3 of 3 (Small - 4 MB)
(Includes rest of Q and A after Part 2 above. Note that entire Q and A is available separately below.)

Lessig At SXSW 2003 - Complete Q and A (Small - 22 MB)
(Includes complete Q and A answers - Questions edited out because it was impossible to hear them.)


Audio files of the presentation in 3 Parts, plus Q and A in separate file:
Note: Please let me know if these are loud enough because I can generate louder ones if necessary!

Audio - Lessig At SXSW 2003 Part 1 of 3 (MP3 - 28 MB)
(Includes Part 1 of 3 of Lessig's presentation.)

Audio - Lessig At SXSW 2003 Part 2 of 3 (MP3 - 28 MB)
(Includes Part 2 of 3 of Lessig's presentation.)

Audio - Lessig At SXSW 2003 Part 3 of 3 (MP3 - 18 MB)
(Includes Part 3 of 3 of Lessig's presentation.)

Audio - Lessig At SXSW 2003 Q and A (MP3 - 15 MB)
(Includes Complete Answers during Q and A with Lessig after his presentation.)


Hi-resolution Files of Presentation (Parts 1-6) and Q and A Answers Afterwards:

Lessig At SXSW 2003 Part 1 of 6 (Hi-Res - 150 MB)
(Includes Part 1 of Lessig's presentation.)

Lessig At SXSW 2003 Part 2 of 6 (Hi-Res - 153 MB)
(Includes Part 2 of Lessig's presentation.)

Lessig At SXSW 2003 Part 3 of 6 (Hi-Res - 167 MB)
(Includes Part 3 of Lessig's presentation.)

Lessig At SXSW 2003 Part 4 of 6 (Hi-Res - 160 MB)
(Includes Part 4 of Lessig's presentation.)

Lessig At SXSW 2003 Part 5 of 6 (Hi-Res - 144 MB)
(Includes Part 5 of Lessig's presentation.)

Lessig At SXSW 2003 Part 6 of 6 (Hi-Res - 60 MB)
(Includes Part 6 of Lessig's presentation.)

Lessig At SXSW 2003 - Q and A (Hi-Res - 268 MB)
(Includes Complete Answers during Q and A with Lessig after his presentation.)



Public Domain Dedication

This work is dedicated to the
Public Domain. (Take it and run, baby!)

Posted by Lisa at 11:51 AM
May 03, 2003
Lessig On The New Anti-Spam Bill He's Betting His Job On

This is a clip from my local San Francisco news station KTVU, from last Monday night.

(Many apologies for the late turn around - I am swamped people! Swamped!)

Lawrence Lessig is helping Congresswoman Zoe Lofgren to spread the word about the launch of her new anti-spam bill, The Reduced Spam Act of 2003.

The bill would protect a business's right to send correspondence to its existing customer base, while providing a cash bounty to users-at-large who are the first to report spam.

More on this in the days to come -- as you can see I've started a category to start tracking spam legislation as it inches along through the various State Legislatures.

I think this kind of legislation is very important. We need it, but we need to protect the right to send unsolicited email. (I get great unsolicited email all the time, and I probably send even more of it.)

Lofgren's Anti-Spam Bill, KTVU - Channel 2 News 4-28-03 (Small - 6 MB)
Lofgren's Anti-Spam Bill, KTVU - Channel 2 News 4-28-03 (Hi-Res - 97 MB)
Audio - Lofgren's Anti-Spam Bill, KTVU - Channel 2 News 4-28-03 (MP3 - 4 MB)



Posted by Lisa at 01:53 PM
March 11, 2003
Lawrence Lessig's SXSW 2003 Presentation - March 9, 2003

Let me know how these files work out for you. I'm experimenting with the "email" format setting in IMovie.

Lawrence Lessig at SXSW 2003 - Part 1 of 2 (Lo-res 11 MB)
Lawrence Lessig at SXSW 2003 - Part 2 of 2 (Lo-res 14 MB)

Posted by Lisa at 10:01 AM
December 29, 2002
Smaller Files of Lessig's Creative Commons Presentation

Sorry these took so long. Here are some medium and low resolution versions of Lawrence Lessig's December 16, 2002 presentation in San Francisco at the Creative Commons Launch.


Small files and MP3s of Lessig's CC Launch Speech (and others)

Posted by Lisa at 12:09 PM
December 23, 2002
Lessig, Barlow, Valenti at Creative Commons Launch

I'll be putting up a movie every day this week: Lawrence Lessig, John Perry Barlow and Jack Valenti today, DJ Spooky Tomorrow, Brewster Khale and (mini-brewster), Craig Newmark, Aaron Swartz and Vicki Bennett as the week goes on...
(Lower resolultion versions available now.)
First Part of Larry's speech (92.4 MB)

John Perry Barlow and Jack Valenti speeches (75.2 MB)

Second Part of Larry's speech (78.6 MB)

Posted by Lisa at 07:40 AM
August 13, 2002
Lessig's OSCON Keynote

Lawrence Lessig's keynote from OSCON 2002 is now available online (its an audio file over a powerpoint presentation in Flash format): http://randomfoo.net/oscon/2002/lessig/.

Posted by Lisa at 02:10 PM