Lessig into Politics

Lawrence Lessig may be about to announce that he is running for Congress. He has been an early and strong Obama supporter. It would be interesting if it happens; Obama for President and Lessig in Congress?

Lessig will not be worried if both his supporters and his critics scour his publications for clues to his political motivation and for controversial issues which will be aired in the election process. The Exact Editions Lessig mini-library facilitates searching and cross-comparisons. I guess the 'black' propagandists of the Republican right may be searching it for inconsistency right now ;-). Mind you would'nt it be cool if we could put Obama's book The Audacity of Hope into an Open Exact Editions format? Perhaps every politician running for office should make his publications open, at least during the election campaign.

I suspect that Bloomsbury would do no damage to sales and will attract some worthwhile interest if they were to put Gordon Brown's two books into an open format. Since Random House will want to recoup the $9 million advance on Tony Blair's forthcoming book, it is unlikely that it will be appearing with a Creative Commons licence any time soon.