In November, Professor Edward Lee participated in Stanford Law School’s Center for Internet and Society (CIS) Speaker Series. Professor Lee gave a presentation titled “Stopping SOPA: Copyright, Free Speech, and Popular Constitutionalism.” The following description is from the CIS webpage:
During late 2011 and January 2012, millions of people protested the passage of the controversial copyright bill the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) in Congress. The protests culminated in the largest online protest in the history of the Internet, with web giant Wikipedia and thousands of other websites going black in a day of self-censorship. In a few short months, the protesters achieved something remarkable: they defeated money, politicians, Hollywood, and the copyright lobby, all in the name of a “free and open Internet.” This talk with Professor Edward Lee explains these grassroots movements as a form of popular constitutionalism. Courts didn’t define speech rights. People did. And, in the end, it was the people’s view of free speech that carried the day.
Watch video from Professor Lee’s presentation below.
The presentation touched on themes from Professor Lee’s forthcoming book, The New Free Speech. The book investigates “how a grassroots movement involving millions of people was able to defeat money, politicians, Hollywood, and the copyright lobby, all in the name of a ‘free and open Internet.'”
Visit http://thenewfreespeech.com for more information about the book and a multimedia preview of some of the key events and figures discussed in the book.
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