[wordup] Lessig Calls for Geeks to Code Money Out of Politics

[Adam Shand]

Via: Royce Williams <royce at alaska.net>
Source: http://blog.wired.com/business/2008/03/etech-lessig-ca.html

ETech: Lessig Calls for Geeks to Code Money Out of Politics
By Ryan Singel
March 05, 2008 | 11:15:32 PM

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SAN DIEGO -- Stanford law professor and internet icon Larry Lessig  
called on geeks Wednesday night to be "heroes" who can help Americans  
believe in their government again, by creating tools to help drive the  
influence of money out of politics.

"We have had different times in this country requiring different  
heroes," Lessig said in a keynote speech at the O'Reilly Emerging  
Technology conference here.

"During World War II, we required soldiers as heroes," Lessig said.  
"We may be at a time when we need geeks as heroes."

Lessig says he needs help from coders, because problems like global  
warming can't be solved until elected officials are freed from the  
corrupting effect of campaign contributions.
Lessig recently flirted with the idea of running for Congress, but  
instead is launching a new campaign called Change Congress.

The new project is modeled on the Creative Commons project he started  
to help change how copyright works, which allows people to tag their  
writings and photography with alternative copyright badges.

The project, to be officially announced in two weeks, will give  
candidates for political office three choices they can support in  
order to get badges for their campaign website.
Candidates who pledge not to take money from lobbyists or political  
action committees can claim one badge, get another for pledging to ban  
"earmarks" in Congress and take a third for supporting public campaign  
financing.

 From there, Lessig wants to find ways to get individuals to funnel  
early money to candidates who pledge to support one or more of the  
principles.

That's the carrot.

The stick approach includes possibly recruiting respected "citizen  
candidates" to run against politicians who don't support the  
statements -- a way, Lessig said, to make it cheaper for a candidate  
to support the principles than to ignore them.

Lessig's new project comes after 10 years of working on what he calls  
the "Free Culture" project that focused on copyright reform to  
encourage an explosion of creative remixing of our cultural history.

Lessig says the only way for Congress to change is to have outsiders  
change the system, since right now the whole system is rigged.

"Congress is an incumbency machine," Lessig said.

But he doesn't think legislators are by and large crooks who are  
taking bribes in exchange for votes. In fact, he says we may have the  
least bribery in our nation's history.

But the money still corrupts in a number of ways. For instance,  
legislators, like scientists funded by drug companies, internalize  
their supporters' interests.

"Money corrupts the process of reasoning," Lessig said. "They get a  
sixth sense of how what they do might affect how they raise money."

Lawmakers need to be free from a system that requires them to  
constantly raise money in order to free them to simply think about how  
to craft good public policy.

Lessig spared no rhetoric in making his case against the corrupting  
influence of campaign contributions  -- comparing the urgency of the  
financing problem to that of an alcoholic about to lose his family and  
job, but who has to "realize the first problem that must be solved is  
the alcoholism."

Health care reform, global warming and immigration?

"There is no way to think about solving these problems until we solve  
the money problem," Lessig said.

Lessig also pointed to the Sunlight Foundation and MAPLight.org as  
examples of burgeoning uses for technology to show -- and thus  
hopefully diminish -- the influence of money on politicians.

The geeks in San Diego embraced Lessig's call to keyboards, giving him  
a standing ovation, but wanted to know what they could do right now.

Lessig tamped down their excitement a bit, saying the project could  
take three or four election cycles to truly create this year's  
political buzzword, "change."

The outro music to Lessig's speech was the Rolling Stone's "You Can't  
Always Get What You Want."