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The Rhetoric of Lawrence Lessig
posted by mpawlo on Thursday August 22, @07:06AM
from the analyze-this dept.
News Alex Golub, a graduate student studying anthropology at the University of Chicago, has spent some time analyzing Lawrence Lessig's OSCON 2002 speech from a rhetorical point of view. It is indeed interesting reading. Golub's review is far from the usual adoring stuff we furnish you at Greplaw. Golub concludes:



As far as I can tell, Lawrence Lessig got up there at OSCON to a room of people who loved him, loved his message. Saw him as the articulator of their cause, the guy who put what they knew and felt about the lives they lived and the careers they loved into words that lawyers and judges and politicians could understand. He had a half hour to blow their socks off, and he blew it.'

Read the verdict.

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    The Rhetoric of Lawrence Lessig | Login/Create an Account | Top | 1 comments | Search Discussion
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    Don't shoot the messenger (Score:1)
    by Tim on Friday August 23, @06:49AM (#247)
    User #169 Info
    Whether Lessig's rhetoric was good or bad, I cannot say -- I wasn't there.

    However ... he's quite right to point out that the decisions that matter are made in "LawyerLand": in court, in the US Congress, in the European institutions, etc. The philosophy that says, "just program -- laws can't hurt you" is just plain wrong. Laws can hurt you: there's the DMCA, the attack on P2P (including Berman's Bill), Hollings' Bill on "trusted computing", the current controversy in Europe on data retention, etc.

    You can't just "program around" the law. People said that Napster was a top example of "programming around" the law, but the law caught up with Napster. Now, the law is chasing after the post-Napster P2P networks, and Hollywood wants to hack your PC. And if you break the DMCA, you could discover that you can't program yourself out of jail.

    LawyerLand is the battlefield -- whether geeks like it or not. Don't shoot the messenger.

    Humanity has the stars in its future, and that future is too important to be lost under the burden of juvenile folly and ignorant superstition. - Isaac Asimov

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