for W3c validation

Though I have never read Lawrence Lessig’s blog or heard of him, I ran across a inspirational post of his on Techmeme last night. He’s shifting his life focus away from intellectual property and toward political “corruption.” Lawrence seems to be very influential — check out this section of his bio:

Professor Lessig is the author of Free Culture (2004), The Future of Ideas (2001), Code and Other Laws of Cyberspace (1999) and Code 2.0 (2006). He chairs the Creative Commons project, and serves on the board of the Free Software Foundation, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the Public Library of Science, and Public Knowledge. He is also a columnist for Wired.

He received a number of thorough comments, most of them positive, in response to his decision to shift his focus to political “corruption.”

Anyway, the point is that I think it’s very cool to see someone of Mr Lessig’s stature (influence and connections) who has been devoted to intellectual property and making software free for 10 years to switch his focus to something that REALLY needs to be addressed — corruption of the political process. I thought this was a great quote:

In the US, listening to money is the only way to secure reelection. And so an economy of influence bends public policy away from sense, always to dollars.

It’s freakin ridiculous — politicians should not be funded by special interest groups. There HAS to be a better way to run elections — MAYBE give every candidate equal television time? Give them a “salary cap” of sorts for their campaign. Anything is better than the corrupt system in place now. Though I’m sure it won’t happen quickly, I hope Lessig can help turn the tide.