Lawrence Lessig, the cyberlaw author and advocate for free software and online
civil liberties, is considering a run for the U.S. Congress, he announced
on his blog Wednesday.

Lessig, author of books such as "Free
Culture" and "Code
2.0," would run for the open House of Representatives seat in California
created by the death of Representative Tom Lantos, a Democrat, earlier this
month. A "draft Lessig"
movement has popped up online since Lantos died.

Lessig said he plans to make the decision about whether to run by about March
1. "This is a very difficult decision," he wrote on his blog. "Thank
you to everyone who has tried to help -- both through very strong words of encouragement
and very, very strong words to dissuade."

Lessig, a self-described progressive, would run as part of his Change Congress
campaign. The Stanford University law professor announced in January that he
would shift his focus to political corruption and away from free software and
free culture.

He called on lawmakers to stop accepting money from political action committees
and lobbyists, and to stop adding so-called earmarks for special projects in
appropriation legislation. Politicians need to change "how Washington works"
and to end a culture of corruption that's based on political contributions,
he said in a video at Lessig08.org.

"You know about this corruption in Washington, a corruption that doesn't
come from evil people, a corruption that comes from good people working in a
bad system," he said in the video. Progressives should work to change the
way money influences decisions in Washington, he said, "not because this
is, in some sense, the most important problem, but because it is the first problem
that has to be solved if we're going to address these more fundamental problems
later."

During a Lessig speech at Stanford in January, one audience member challenged
him to "do something" about the problems in Washington, he said. Lessig
is considering a run for Congress "with lots of fear and uncertainty,"
he said.

Already in the race for Lantos' seat is Jackie Speier, a former Democratic
state senator in California. A primary election in the heavily Democratic Silicon
Valley district is scheduled for April 8.

Some visitors to Lessig's blog expressed support for his candidacy, but one
said Speier would be a strong candidate as well. "I think that your anti-corruption
movement, and your effort to reform Congress, would be more likely to succeed
from the outside, and could be damaged by a partisan campaign in which you oppose
a good candidate," someone wrote.

Others repeated calls for him to run. "My only hope for the future of
the Internet and our digital life in general is that we start electing candidates
from this new generation, who think differently about issues like digital freedom
and copyright," one person wrote. "Lessig certainly is one of those
candidates."

Lessig served as a special master in the U.S. government's antitrust case against
Microsoft. He's the founder of the Creative Commons, which attempts to give
copyright holders additional options for licensing their work beyond all rights
reserved.

Lessig has served on the boards of the Free
Software Foundation, the Electronic
Frontier Foundation, the Public
Library of Science, and Public
Knowledge.

IDG News Service

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