Wednesday, January 10, 2007

Cyberspace

My first day of classes included Cyberspace Law with one of my favorite profs. (A friend of mine always shakes his head when I mention this class: "'Cyberspace' is like 'the Information Superhighway;' who says that anymore?!").

Obviously the famous Stanford law prof Lawrence Lessig came up a lot in our class discussions. I told my story of Lessig: A friend of mine Troubles in Paradox got us invited to the 4th birthday party of Creative Commons (Lessig's new-age copyright brain child). We were very excited because we thought Lessig was scheduled to speak at the party. Instead, he appeared as his online avatar from Second Life on a projected computer screen. Disappointing.

Anyway, my prof joked about Lessig's rise from a "boring law professor from Standford" into Coolness: "He grew a little goatee and started wearing black!"

7 comments:

First Year said...

Glad to hear you've got a class with a prof. you actually like :)

Greg said...

He should shake his head. It pains me to say it, because it's horribly dated.

In fact, during the activities fair my 1L year, I instantly endeared myself to the IPCLA president when I asked, "Do people really still use the term 'cyber' anymore? I thought that ended 5 years ago."

Odd that I was never contacted by them again...

Dave said...

On a side note, Judge Posner recently gave a lecture on cyberspace property rights to Second Life denizens as a cartoon character of himself. Check the end of the article. I'm gonna get around to blogging about that one of these days.

Sansserif said...

Oh man! Judge Posner? That's so bizarre.

Also: Although I think "Cyberspace" is incredibly cheesey, you gotta admit it has a little more spice than "Internet Law." Who knows, may "cyberspace" will come back into fashion.

Anonymous said...

http://xkcd.com/c181.html

Anonymous said...

or, again

Sansserif said...

Anonymous - love the link. Thanks.