Lessig Says He Doesn’t Put Faith in Google

Lessig and Google have been in general agreement on major points involving net neutrality, copyright and spectrum policy and other federal action to promote the spread of broadband. Google has provided major financial support for some of Lessig’s organizations, a point that didn’t come up at the event on the influence of corporate money on policy. Executives of the groups said the money doesn’t affect their decisions. “I have views that sometimes agree and sometimes disagree with Google,” Lessig told us by e-mail. “I've done nothing that conflicts with my disclosure policy… Nothing in my relationship to Stanford has been made contingent upon money from Google. Google has no control over our work or the substance of our policy positions.”

Google’s “famous announcement” -- “its charter” -- that “it will not be evil” can provide an engineer at the company an objection to a boss that would be “bizarre” to raise in another corporation, Lessig said in his presentation. “I like what the company has done in a large number of areas, including copyright,” he said. But “I don’t have any long- term faith in any company to do the right thing in terms of right public policy.” There are “institutions in the world devoted to producing wealth,” and then there are “institutions in the world devoted to producing good,” like not-for-profit organizations and governments, Lessig said.

Later, Glenn Brown, a business-development executive at Google’s YouTube, said of Lessig’s view of the parent company: “It seems really reasonable. There’s no reason to fear at the moment. I believe that it wants to do the right thing. I certainly trust it. But I can understand why people outside the company would have a healthy distrust.”

Lessig is moving to Harvard University in connection with a shift of emphasis from Internet policy to fighting political corruption, particularly in Congress, Brown mentioned in introducing the professor’s presentation. Lessig will join the Harvard Law School faculty and become the director of the Safra Center for Ethics on campus in the summer. Harvard announced the move, and Lessig discussed it on his blog, late last week.

Companies can flip-flop in the blink of an eye for business reasons - and not even lose clout, Lessig said. AT&T and America Online supported open access to online networks until they were bought and switched sides, he said. Policymakers continued treating them as credible, Lessig said. “This is the way public policy is done: Listening to corporations.”

Regulation of communications sometimes has been affected differently from policy on other industries by a Capitol Hill “culture of corruption” created by corporate lobbying, Lessig said. In finance and other industries, the result has been deregulation, he said. But when Vice President Al Gore proposed creating a “fundamentally deregulated title” covering the Internet in the federal Communications Act, the answer in Congress was “hell, no -- how are we going to raise money from the telcos if we deregulate them?” Lessig said. In other contexts “we would call this ‘extortion,'” he said.

Change Congress aims to clean up the system and especially to cure a profound and widespread loss of trust in government by ordinary people, Lessig said. The Web-centric group asks voters and congressional incumbents and challengers to take a reform pledge. Its Web site says 177 members and candidates have signed on. Change Congress, based in San Francisco, has an e-mail list of about 7,000, said Executive Director Monica Walsh.

The most important plank is public financing of campaigns, Lessig said. He said candidates should be allowed to collect unlimited donations up to $250 per contributor and should get enough federal money to be competitive - unlike the current presidential campaign funding that President- elect Barack Obama opted out of.

Stanford Law School sharply disputed two articles in The Register online tech-news site this year and last seeking to tie Lessig’s support for Google’s positions to a $2 million donation by the company in 2006 to the Center on Internet and Society, which the professor founded and co-directs. “Google provides the support it does knowing that such support cannot and will not affect or control the positions taken by CIS’s faculty and staff, and knowing that faculty and staff at the institution they are supporting -- which is Stanford Law School -- will be taking positions with which they disagree as often as agree,” Dean Larry Kramer wrote to the writer and his editor in July.

The center deals with “every policy issue solely on whether it helps or harms consumers’ interests online,” Executive Director Lauren Gelman said in an e-mail. “That is CIS’ mission. Google’s involvement or position is completely irrelevant.” On privacy, for example, Gelman said, “I supported Google’s fight against the [government’s] request for search terms in the COPPA battle, and disagree with their position that IP addresses are not” personally identifiable information.

Google is one of six “platinum level” supporters of Creative Commons, along with Microsoft. That’s the highest level of contributor, $50,000 a year, and the group’s site said it allows the greatest access to its leaders. “CC is supported by a very diverse set of foundations, individuals, and corporations (including Google’s competitors),” Vice President Mike Linksvayer said by e-mail. “The common thread is an understanding that CC is an important part of making sure that the potential of the Internet is realized, which benefits everyone.” Lessig was the group’s first chairman, and he remains on its board. Creative Commons said in October that “a substantial grant” from Google’s policy fellowship program would support a researcher’s work at the organization in the summer of 2009.

Lessig told us his blog has “a very strong conflict policy for myself,” maybe “the strongest in the field” (www.lessig.org/info/disclosure). It says: “I don’t shill for anyone. … If payment is made to an institution that might reasonably be said to benefit me indirectly, then I will either follow the same rule, or disclose the payment… I do no fund-raising for my law school.”

“[I]f you give a substantial amount of money to Stanford, you don’t, in my view, indirectly benefit me -- because you have not made my life any different from how it was before you gave that money.” Creative Commons has received “substantial contributions” from two donors besides foundations, Lessig said. “With neither would I ever ‘recommend as policy a position’ that benefitted either -- even if I believed, independently, that the position was correct. This doesn’t mean I wouldn’t help such people, or advise them. It simply means I would not publicly say something about their position, after such support was received.” - Louis Trager