At a preview of his new ‘Change Congress’ project, the Stanford professor took a swipe at the Pirate Party of the United States. Whilst expressing skepticism about it’s utility, his main criticism seemed to be the name.

Lawrence Lessig appears to be in and out of the tech news recently - the will-he-won’t-he run for Congress, has caused a storm of blog-posts this last month alone. Having declined to run on the democratic party ticket, he has now started criticizing other parties.

At a preview of his new Change Congress project at the ETech conference, the Creative Commons founder responded to a question about the US Pirate Party, saying “I’m skeptical of the utility of something like the Pirate Party in the United States.” He went on to comment about the naming, referring to the ‘honest business fighting illegitimate thieves‘ battle that Hollywood portrays with “Call your party the Pirate Party, and you’ll reinforce that. The branding is not one that I would embrace here in the United States.” Read the rest of this entry »