Digital Culture Shift: Lessig Leaves IP Battle

Stanford Law Professor, Creative Commons chairman and IP warrior Lawrence Lessig has announced that he will be shifting his focus away from the intellectual property debate.Lessig said:

“I will no longer be lecturing about IP (whether as in TCP/IP or IPR) issues. No doubt there will be exceptions. In particular, I have a few (though because this decision has been in the works for months, very few) obligations through the balance of the year. There will be others in the future too. But in general, unless there are very strong reasons, I will not be accepting invitations to talk about the issues that have defined my work for the past decade.”

On Lessig’s site the professor cites Barack Obama and Al Gore as the positive inspirations behind turning his future attentions to the subject of political corruption. Lessig will continue to chair Creative Commons, but in the near term the intellectual property debate has lost one of its most compelling thinkers.

Photo: Peter Kaminski