Computer users of the world have united behind Stanford law professor

December 19, 2004 by element115
With his dazzling academic record, fiery rhetoric, and prolific writing, however, Lessig has become the most recognizable voice to articulate why it was a bad idea to privatize the open environment of the Internet, and how the expansion of I.P. threatens future innovation. Tonight he's lending support to a student protest group, one formed by the students threatened when they exposed the electronic voting scandal. Like other student groups, this one is renouncing private I.P. interests, has the word "commons" in its name, identifies with the I.P. have-nots, and invokes a class struggle. Means of production, communal ownership, class struggle, students with slogans on their shirts. Sounds like a Marxist revolution.
Lessig is routinely denounced as a communist. The most recent such attack was by a high-profile technology columnist named Stephen Manes. In several vitriolic attacks prompted by Lessig's Free Culture, Manes described Lessig as "blustering" and "bloviating," a "buffoon" and an "idiot," whose ideas ("droppings") were "nuts" and "laughable." Manes contrasted Lessig's "radicalism" on copyright policy with the stance of "responsible creators" like Walt Disney, and made it clear that the sort of reform Lessig advocates is ideologically suspect because it involves stealing property from copyright owners.
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