Blogging Killed the C-SPAN Star

On Friday, I had the pleasure seeing Lawrence Lessig speak at the Library of Congress. I consider Professor Lessig to be the foremost thinker about the myriad of issues arising when existing copyright law is applied to emerging digital technologies. Additionally, he has been at the forefront of working to fix the problem both legally and technologically, via Creative Commons.

His talk was broadcast live on CSPAN, and fortunately Greg was able to grab a good chunk of it for me from his Replay. And guess what!! I got some air time! I’m a TV star! What is especially amusing was that I was chatting on IRC with him via my Palm T GRPS connection while he was watching me live on television. Every few minutes, the channel would get an “OH MY GOD THEY JUST TOTALLY SHOWED YOU!!” I’d like to thank the academy, my producer, my lovely wife…

Afterwards, I was able to spend a few minutes chatting and ask him some questions. Unfortunately, I was a bit star-struck, and fumbled my question and made myself look like a fool. I hate making a bad first impression, especially if the first impression is as a fawning buffoon. Well, at least I had the honor to shake his hand.