We have to put this issue on the table because the politicians won't talk about it otherwise, what has happened is that this concentration of influence has made it impossible for the government to actually function for either issues on the right or on the left. It is corruption, because the framers intended for our government, as Madison put it, to be dependent on the people alone. We have a system where these members of Congress spend 30-70% of their time raising money from the tiniest fraction of the 1 percent.

Lawrence Lessig

Categorized in : Politics

The war against illegal file-sharing is like the church's age-old war against masturbation. It's a war you just can't win.

Lawrence Lessig

age winning war

Before the monopoly should be permitted, there must be reason to believe it will do some good - for society, and not just for monopoly holders.

Lawrence Lessig

monopoly reason believe

We are on the cusp of this time where I can say, "I speak as a citizen of the world" without others saying, "God, what a nut."

Lawrence Lessig

atheism citizens nuts

A world where Congressmen spend 30 to 70 percent of their time raising money from a tiny, tiny fraction of the 1% is a world where that tiny, tiny fraction has enormous power. And it's that inequality in political power that enables this corrupted system to happen.

Lawrence Lessig

tiny political world

A culture without property, or in which creators can't get paid, is anarchy, not freedom.

Lawrence Lessig

creator anarchy culture

Some may not like the Constitution's requirements, but that doesn't make the Constitution a pirate's charter.

Lawrence Lessig

pirate requirements may

Notwithstanding the fact that the most innovative and progressive space we've seen - the Internet - has been the place where intellectual property has been least respected. You know, facts don't get in the way of this ideology.

Lawrence Lessig

space intellectual way

I'm all for experimenting with sortition - randomly selected representative bodies of citizens. But I don't favor direct democracy. We're busy. We have lives. There is reddit. Who has time to work out the right answer to the thousand policy choices a gov't must make all the time?

Lawrence Lessig

work-out democracy choices

If the Internet teaches us anything, it is that great value comes from leaving core resources in a commons, where they're free for people to build upon as they see fit.

Lawrence Lessig

leaving change people

Winner take all does not exist in the Constitution. It's a restriction imposed on the electors by the states.

Lawrence Lessig

winner constitution doe

Copyright law has got to give up its obsession with 'the copy.' The law should not regulate 'copies' or 'modern reproductions' on their own. It should instead regulate uses--like public distributions of copies of copyrighted work--that connect directly to the economic incentive copyright law was intended to foster.

Lawrence Lessig

giving-up use law

I find focusing clearly on the problem is the first step to seeing a solution. The problem is (a) the insane amount of time spent raising money from (b) a freakishly tiny proportion of America. Basically .05% are the "relevant funders" of campaigns, meaning candidates can't help but be overly sensitive to the views of that tiny fraction relative to the rest of us. IF that's the problem, THEN the solution is to spread the funders out: to increase the range of us who are the relevant funders of elections, through schemes like vouchers or coupons given to every voter.

Lawrence Lessig

insane views america

Under the principle of equality, we should get as close to respecting equal votes of every citizen as we can, given our constitutional structure. And I think if we did that, then the will of the people would not be overturned.

Lawrence Lessig

principles people thinking

Technology means you can now do amazing things easily; but you couldn't easily do them legally.

Lawrence Lessig

amazing-things technology mean

When government disappears, its not as if paradise will take its place. When governments are gone, other interests will take their place.

Lawrence Lessig

paradise government gone

I am a big supporter of experiments to complement representative gov't with randomly selected representative bodies of citizens, sure. I think most Americans would be surprised to learn just how much better we are at gov't than our gov't.

Lawrence Lessig

citizens would-be thinking

There are a lot of people who say we need to cut the amount of money that's spent in politics. I'm not sure that I agree. But I am sure that if you were talking about cutting the amount of money spent in politics, the media would have a strong interest in opposing you, because they make an enormous amount of money from political advertisements.

Lawrence Lessig

cutting media strong

My work about corruption is to get people to see it less as a moral issue (right/wrong) and more as an economic issue (economies of influence and their effect).

Lawrence Lessig

issues moral people

When you think about a presidential candidate spending all of his or her time talking to that tiny, tiny fraction of us who have the capacity to fund political elections, it's obvious why the perspective of government is skewed relative to what most Americans care about.

Lawrence Lessig

government talking thinking

I don't support direct democracy because I want a life, and that means I want to select people who work for me who do that sort of work for me.

Lawrence Lessig

support mean people