You may know Lawrence Lessig from such books as The Future of Ideas, Free Culture or Code and Other Laws of Cyberspace. You may also know him from Hi Blog, Eldred.cc, or The Creative Commons.
In How I Lost The Big One he takes a look at his Supreme Court Case, Eldred V. Ashcroft. He lost the case, and he’s very hard on himself. [Via Mefi]
“When I can make light of it, I think, “Honey, I shrunk the Constitution.” But I can rarely make light of it. We had in our Constitution a commitment to free culture. In the case that I fathered, the Supreme Court effectively renounced that commitment. A better lawyer would have made them see differently.“
Lessig takes one for the team
I followed the case loosely and was pretty disappointed when it broke the way it did. Lessig seems infinitely disappointed. His accusation that the court is currently a mess resonated with me, who felt that they installed Bush in 2000. “Equal protection” my ass. They’ve pretty consistantly favored the wealthy and powerful.
Lessig is hard on himself but the stakes were pretty damn high. Now we’ll have to wait for a generation or more of justices to rotate out (pity they can’t go faster, this bunch…esp. Thomas and Scalia). Copyright is bought and paid for as is a lot of intellectual freedom (patriot act).
The Court
Check your facts on the 2000 case. The Court didn’t install Bush–even with all the recounts he still won, hanging chads and all. Which should have never been necessary if the Democrats let voters make their own decisions, even “wrong” ones.
If Nader hadn’t run, Gore would have been our President.
If Gore had won his home state of TN, Nader’s votes in FL wouldn’t have made any difference.
Get over it. John Adams wouldn’t have been President either if we went by popular vote.