>While Lessig is gracious here, I don't have to be.
You don't have to be, but it might have been a good idea to do so given there's always the chance one is missing a bit of history, like you (and some of the other comments in this thread) are demonstrating here. The post-hoc heroification of Lessig is somewhat sickening on a technical forum given how badly he blew it Eldred vs. Ashcroft with exactly the sort of Mr. Smug Constitutionalist Professor attitude that the Podesta email called out. The result of that case was a huge blow, maybe the only best chance there was to at least prevent flagrant, retroactive infinite extensions of copyright, to help in some way protect Public Domain, and despite direct hints from the justices he just refused to engage in practical core economic arguments in favor of academic scholarship. This was obvious to everyone with a smidgen of legal knowledge following along at the time, and for that it was obvious to him too in retrospect. Read his own analysis from Legal Affairs, "How I Lost the Big One" [1]. His summary sentence says it all really: "When Eric Eldred's crusade to save the public domain reached the Supreme Court, it needed the help of a lawyer, not a scholar."
It's directly apropos here because yeah, Lessig is a good writer. And he can definitely do the whole humble/gracious thing alright. But that's cold god damned comfort to the hundreds of millions who lost out due to his total fuck up. I have not forgotten nor forgiven it. I'm glad he's gone on to try to do other good things, and people like him have a valuable role in debate. But the real world of politics and power is not a classroom debate, and people like him do not belong anywhere near a position of importance that requires direct interaction, understanding, and manipulation of the filthy realities upon which good must build.
The email might have been "rude" (and I use scare quotes because I don't consider privately using strong language in a bit of venting that you have the self-control not to make public rude), but it was also strongly rooted in fact. His presidential campaign was flat out disgusting, built on an utter lie (I cannot believe Lessig of all people doesn't understand the separation of powers) and flagrant irresponsibility over the lives of billions of people, because that responsibility is part of what it means to be President of the United States of America. He said he was running for real back then, he raised money, and I think anyone who does that should be serious about going all the way in case their super long shot somehow manages to catch a wave of cultural zeitgeist and work against all odds. I would have been delighted if he or anyone else had made a true comprehensive technology cored platform and ran with it, treating the entire thing with the seriousness and practicality it deserves, but he did not.
I will always admire many of his ideas and how he's helped a generation of minds think in new ways. But when it comes to politics his approach can get stuffed, and he clearly did not learn from one of the great blunder in technological law precedent of the last few decades.
Thanks for the history lesson. It was valuable, though from what I understand, it's separate from the motivation for the Tanden/Podesta conversation on display here.
And thank you in turn for replying. You and I both received a number of downvotes, and outside of obvious spam and low effort posting it's disappointing to not receive at least a quick reply as to why. FWIW, I disagree with certain more specific parts of your post and that it's
>separate from the motivation for the Tanden/Podesta conversation on display here
as I think they're basically linked. If there's one thing Clinton embodies at this point as much as any politician in modern history, it's an extreme wonky attention to detail and pragmatism. Even more then disciplines like engineering, I think it'd be fair to describe applied politics as "the art of the possible". Lessig represents pretty much the polar opposite perspective, beyond any of the boring modern mush polarization of "left" vs "right". He's the Ivory Tower theorist/idealist, and that is a philosophical divide that has inspired fierce arguments and feelings for probably millennia. Unfortunately he's done some real damage with that attitude and his presidential campaign attempt indicates to me that whatever lesson he learned from his last major work in national level applied politics hasn't stuck very well (or that he learned the wrong lesson).
So assuming they encountered that sort of approach of his elsewhere, I think it is a legitimate thing to be frustrated over. And internal private venting in an organization using blunter and more colorful language then would be appropriate in public is not something I consider to represent a problem in and of itself. A lot of us have had times where we've cussed out some contractor or partner company or for that matter government bureaucrats inside our organizations out of feelings of immense frustration, sometimes fully justified, sometimes not, and sometimes in the heat of a moment more due to overall stress beyond any individual actor. I've encouraged team mates to do that in fact, because I wanted them venting to me, never ever ever to an external party. It's human to get furious sometimes, but it's professional to then put a lid on it. Often we've had response discussions and had an initial meeting where angry stuff gets said and written, and then the rule is that everyone sleeps on it. Re-reading the next day always results in major toning down, sometimes seeing that in the wider scheme it's really not that big a deal. But you wouldn't see that if you just grabbed the angry emails themselves.
I guess, just, be careful about getting too absolutist in your reading of modern times, where the public objectively has more access to information, secure communications, and lower barriers to entry and participation then any point in human history. I find naked assertions like "never in American history has money had such a stranglehold on our elected officials" dubious given "American history" includes times when merely traveling to the capital might take months and represented significant outlay. Money has always played a role. Are you really sure about the relative levels of power behemoths of power like Standard Oil had vs now? Have you considered how much of an issue "money" is vs the sorts of political favors and horse trading that happened even 50-100 years ago? Is it really right to blame "money" as if voters themselves are somehow getting out decided given their level of participation? I'm very suspicious of talk of "blowing up the system" because historically the result of blowing up systems tends to be uniformly bad, not good. Building something good takes immense intelligence, work, consistent engagement, and also a shitload of luck. A lot less, I'll note, then, say, actually just getting voter turnout high, every two years, for decades in favor of a focused positive agenda. In other words, if you can't pull that off in a democratic system with very strong speech protections and rule of law, what exactly makes you think you'd do better having "blown it up"? Populist appeals to quick fixes should always be met with suspicion.
You don't have to be, but it might have been a good idea to do so given there's always the chance one is missing a bit of history, like you (and some of the other comments in this thread) are demonstrating here. The post-hoc heroification of Lessig is somewhat sickening on a technical forum given how badly he blew it Eldred vs. Ashcroft with exactly the sort of Mr. Smug Constitutionalist Professor attitude that the Podesta email called out. The result of that case was a huge blow, maybe the only best chance there was to at least prevent flagrant, retroactive infinite extensions of copyright, to help in some way protect Public Domain, and despite direct hints from the justices he just refused to engage in practical core economic arguments in favor of academic scholarship. This was obvious to everyone with a smidgen of legal knowledge following along at the time, and for that it was obvious to him too in retrospect. Read his own analysis from Legal Affairs, "How I Lost the Big One" [1]. His summary sentence says it all really: "When Eric Eldred's crusade to save the public domain reached the Supreme Court, it needed the help of a lawyer, not a scholar."
It's directly apropos here because yeah, Lessig is a good writer. And he can definitely do the whole humble/gracious thing alright. But that's cold god damned comfort to the hundreds of millions who lost out due to his total fuck up. I have not forgotten nor forgiven it. I'm glad he's gone on to try to do other good things, and people like him have a valuable role in debate. But the real world of politics and power is not a classroom debate, and people like him do not belong anywhere near a position of importance that requires direct interaction, understanding, and manipulation of the filthy realities upon which good must build.
The email might have been "rude" (and I use scare quotes because I don't consider privately using strong language in a bit of venting that you have the self-control not to make public rude), but it was also strongly rooted in fact. His presidential campaign was flat out disgusting, built on an utter lie (I cannot believe Lessig of all people doesn't understand the separation of powers) and flagrant irresponsibility over the lives of billions of people, because that responsibility is part of what it means to be President of the United States of America. He said he was running for real back then, he raised money, and I think anyone who does that should be serious about going all the way in case their super long shot somehow manages to catch a wave of cultural zeitgeist and work against all odds. I would have been delighted if he or anyone else had made a true comprehensive technology cored platform and ran with it, treating the entire thing with the seriousness and practicality it deserves, but he did not.
I will always admire many of his ideas and how he's helped a generation of minds think in new ways. But when it comes to politics his approach can get stuffed, and he clearly did not learn from one of the great blunder in technological law precedent of the last few decades.
1. http://www.legalaffairs.org/issues/March-April-2004/story_le...