In this talk, Professor Lessig will develop the links between free labor movement of the 19th century, and the free software. Stallman says his free software is free in the sense of free speech; it is more richly seen as free in the sense of free labor. The struggle for free labor today -- in coders, and artists generally -- is restricted by the same controls that restricted free labor in the past: by a legal system that gives overly strong rights to the few against the many.
About the speaker:
Lawrence Lessig is a Professor of Law at the Stanford Law School. He was the Berkman Professor of Law at Harvard Law School. From 1991 to 1997, he was a professor at the University of Chicago Law School. He graduated from Yale Law School in 1989, and then clerked for Judge Richard Posner of the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals, and Justice Antonin Scalia on the Supreme Court. Lessig teaches and writes in the areas of constitutional law, contracts, comparative constitutional law, and the law of cyberspace. Lessig serves as a member of the Board of Directors of the Electronic Freedoms Foundation, http://www.eff.org, the Red Hat Center for Open Source, and was a monthly columnist for the Industry Standard. In 1999-2000, he was a fellow at the Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin.
Lessig's c. v. lists his postions and publications. His most recent book is The Future of Ideas: The Fate of the Commons in a Connected World. It follows an earlier book, Code, and Other Laws of Cyberspace. [Both have been well received as thoughtful examinations of important problems. -dra]
Contact information:
Lawrence Lessig
Stanford Law School
Crown Quadrangle
559 Nathan Abbott Way
Stanford, CA 94305-8610
650.736.0999 (vx)
650.723.8440 (fx)
http://cyberlaw.stanford.edu/lessig
lessig@pobox.com