On February 11th, Rep. Tom Lantos, the only Holocaust survivor to serve in Congress passed away.  With his passing, the people of California’s 12th district and the United States as a whole lost a terrific congressman.  Rep. Lantos was a distinctly qualified voice that truly cannot be replaced.

Shortly after news of the Congressman’s passing broke, an interesting name started being whispered in technology circles as a possible candidate.  Ignoring, or perhaps not aware of the fact that Rep. Lantos had already endorsed an assumed successor in Jackie Speier many individuals started to rally around the idea of a Congressman Lessig.

Lessig is an interesting character, especially for those of us who are interested in both technology and law.  He is a Law Professor at Stanford University with a distinguished legal career, one that many assume will earn him an appointment to a federal bench under a Democratic president.  He clerked for both Richard Posner and Antonin Scalia.  He was appointed as a “special master” to assist the judge in Microsoft’s late 1990s antitrust case.  He argued before the Supreme Court in a case against the “Sonny Bono” copyright extension in Eldred v. Ashcroft.

Due to his expertise in the law and his knowledge and passion on technology issues, he has played an active role as a board member of the Electronic Freedom Frontier and as a founder of the Creative Commons movement.  Along with the EFF Lessig has stood up for issues important for the future of the internet such as taking a stand against internet censorship and fighting for net neutrality (in essence making sure that on the internet all traffic is treated equally, instead of allowing your ISP to favor some websites over others).  The Creative Commons movement allows individuals to release their creations (art, music, movies, writings, etc.) under a permissive license that ensures fair use rights and explicitly grants or denys those rights that an author wants to give the public.  CC licensing can been described as “open source culture.”

Very recently Professor Lessig announced that he would be changing his focus from the battle for better copyright to a battle against corruption in congress.  As he put it, his change of focus was not giving up on copyright, but a realization that nothing could be accomplished towards real change until the system itself was less beholden to special interests.   Although it certainly wasn’t his intention when he announced his change of focus several months ago, it is out of this newfound political involvement that he has become a vocal Barack Obama supporter and now is considering a run in the CA-12.

Given the RIT community’s interest in technological issues where Lessig would serve as a knowledgable voice in stark contrast to existing politicians who assure is that “the internet is a series of tubes”, RIT’s sizeable fine arts and photo community which are affected by the implications of copyright law, and the large number of students on campus which have been threatened or prosecuted by the RIAA and MPAA for downloading of copyrighted material, Lawrence Lessig is a uniquely qualified candidate who’s candidacy I feel that the RIT community (not to mention the nation) as a whole has a vested interest in.

For more about Lessig and his candidacy check out Lessig08 or Lessig.org.  I’d highly recommend watching the campaign video on his website.

Filed under: CA-12