[vox] [Fwd [Lawrence Lessig]] Reclaim the Public Domain

[Peter Jay Salzman]

On Wed 04 Jun 03,  9:08 AM, Micah J. Cowan <micah@cowan.name> said:
> On Tue, Jun 03, 2003 at 04:27:23PM -0700, Bill Kendrick wrote:
> > 
> > ---------- Forwarded message ----------
> > Date: Tue, 03 Jun 2003 08:39:08 -0700
> > From: Lawrence Lessig <lessig@pobox.com>
> > To: a8 <lessig@pobox.com>
> > Subject: <no subject>
> > 
> > Hello person-whose-email-address-is-in-my-addressbook:
> > 
> > It is my birthday and I have a favor to ask.
> > 
> > If you are permitted -- by law or conscience -- to sign a petition, I'd be
> > grateful if you would look at:
> > 
> > http://www.PetitionOnline.com/eldred/petition.html
> > 
> > This cause has taken 4 years of my life. I would be extremely happy if you
> > could consider signing it to help us push it along a bit more. If you're a
> > supporter, I'd be even more grateful if you could pester others to sign as
> > well. And if you're not, or can't, or don't know who I am, then sorry for
> > the intrusion. 
> > 
> > 
> > -----
> > Lessig
> > Stanford Law School
> 
> Electronic petitions are not valid legal documents, especially when
> there's not even so much as a *digital* signature involved. I am
> extremely skeptical about this guy being at Stanford Law.
> 
> -Micah

micah,

lessig is a pretty well known public figure (activist/lawyer), on par
with larry rosen and mad-dog.  he specializes in copyright and patent
law with an emphasis on its application to the electronic issues,
including the internet.

the petition thing was not done well:

   http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/56/31018.html

but i don't think he /wants/ a legal document.  i think he simply wants to
show <someone> the constituency of people that share his views about
public domain.  sort of analagous to all those petitions saying "we want
you to port <game> to linux" being sent to game developers.  the
petition for porting half-life to mac or linux isn't binding on the
people who run valve; it's just to say "hey, we all want you to port
half-life to linux".

just for my own education -- when you say "legal document" do you mean
something that can place an issue on a ballot?  because i'm not sure
that's his goal.  i don't think you can petition the federal government
to place something on a national ballot (which is where this kind of
issue would go).

i'm not very knowledgable about this or lessig's intentions.  these are
just my touchy-feely opinions.

pete

-- 
GPG Instructions: http://www.dirac.org/linux/gpg
GPG Fingerprint: B9F1 6CF3 47C4 7CD8 D33E 70A9 A3B9 1945 67EA 951D