Campaign finance reformer Larry Lessig, the only presidential candidate thus far to sit for an interview with Gawker, is dropping his bid for the Democratic nomination. Other presidential candidates are urged to ignore this precedent and contact us to schedule an interview.
"Your Representative Doesn't Give a Shit About You": Larry Lessig's Plan to Fix Democracy

Harvard professor and campaign finance reform crusader Lawrence Lessig is running for the Democratic nomination for president. He was not allowed in tonight’s debates. Luckily, he stopped by to explain his entire platform to us.
Lawrence Lessig's Ideas Are Correct, Important, Too Boring for American Voters
Lawrence Lessig, a Harvard professor who has been one of America’s most active voices in the fight to reform campaign finance laws, is running for president.
Lawrence Lessig Is Here to Talk About Money, Politics, and Democracy
Harvard law professor and public intellectual extraordinaire Lawrence Lessig has a bold idea: raising money in order to take money out of politics. He's here to answer your questions about his plan to start a super PAC with the express purpose of destroying super PACs, and saving democracy.
Happy Birthday
CNN's Anderson Cooper turns 42 today. Tennis star Rafael Nadal is turning 23. Humorist/Apple pitchman John Hodgman is 38. Stanford law professor and Internet pioneer Lawrence Lessig is 48. Raul Castro, the president of Cuba, is turning 78. Actor Tony Curtis is turning 84. John Barlow, the Broadway publicist and…
Indiana Jones and the Fair-Use Ruling of Doom
YouTube was a breeze. Though they insist you should "not upload any TV shows, music videos, music concerts, or commercials without permission unless they consist entirely of content you created yourself," they also explain the "fair use" exception to this rule, in detail. They do, however, leave budding filmmakers…
Lawrence Lessig now to forever be known as "Uncle Larry"
While Republicans did what they could to paint Lawrence Lessig — and, by extension, Barack Obama — as an anti-Christian elitist, they couldn't raise the stink enough. So instead think-tanker Tom Sydnor of the Progress and Freedom Foundation has attacked copylefters as "quasi-socialist utopianism" in a review of…
Comcast chickens out of FCC hearings at Stanford
Superlawyer Lawrence Lessig won't have Comcast to kick around at the FCC hearing on network neutrality — the principle that broadband providers can't discriminate against certain kinds of Internet traffic — being held at Stanford tomorrow. The event was only scheduled after Comcast paid chumps to fill chairs at an…
FCC schedules "do-over" Comcast hearing at Stanford
The FCC has announced that it will hold a second hearing on "net neutrality" — the debate over whether broadband providers can favor some kinds of Internet traffic — at Stanford University on April 17 (PDF). We wrote back in February that FCC chairman Kevin Martin was considering a "do-over"; the FCC's first hearing…
Lessig considers run for Congress
We were just tweaking Stanford law professor Larry Lessig, really, when we asked him if he planned to just study the law, or actually make it. But Lessig now says he's seriously considering a run for the late Tom Lantos's House seat. A grassroots "Draft Lessig" movement prompted him to think about it, he says. Will…
Could Silicon Valley send a nerd to Capitol Hill?
"Run, Lawrence, run!" That's the blog comment that Stanford law professor Lawrence Lessig received after a brief mention of Congressman Tom Lantos's retirement. Could he? A Daily Kos blogger thinks it's plausible, and a majority of readers polled say they'd vote for him. Lessig is intensely popular in Silicon…
Take this Wikipedia and shove it
It was an odd venue for a tech party — a greasy diner by day, the Grill sits on a corner near the ballpark, neighborhing Border's, McDonald's, and dozens of men in Giants windbreakers asking passerbys if they need a ticket. They say open source is about software that's free as in "free speech," not "free beer," but…
Declaring e-mail bankruptcy
NICK DOUGLAS — "If you've sent me an email (and you aren't my wife, partner, or colleague), you might want to send it again." So says Fred Wilson, venture capitalist, declaring e-mail bankruptcy today on his blog. He's not the first high-profile person to take this measure. Here are three other notables who've given…