Lawrence Lessig, Change Congress

Tuesday, June 24, 2008
http://www.beet.tv/2008/06/stanfords-lawre.html
Stanford's Lawrence Lessig: We are in "dangerous cycle now" with misinformation in the blogosphere

NEW YORK -- Earlier today at the Personal Democracy Forum, we spoke with Stanford law professor Lawrence Lessig. Lessig is spending a great deal of time on congressional reform movement called Change Congress, an organization he co-founded with Joe Trippi.

Handling the interview was our colleague Caroline McCarthy of CNET News.com who filed a story earlier in the day on Lessig's keynote speech.

In this interview, Lessig spoke about the need for reform in campaign funding for congress and how he hopes Change Congress will make it happen with an active base of 50,000 members.

In this wide ranging interview, he voiced his concern about a "cycle of misinformation" in the blog world and its impact on mainstream media and public discourse. He cited the recent issue surrounding Judge Kozinski.

In the question about the Associated Press controversy, he says "the AP will be shown to wrong." He adds that colleagues at the Stanford Law School will be involved representing defendants charged by the AP.

Caroline has a second report on the conference and on her on-camera interview with Lessig.

For anoter report on the Personal Democracy Forum, check out The New York Times "The Caucus" blog written by Kit Seelye who has been at the conference for the past two days.

-- Andy Plesser