recursion

Whew! It's be a crazy couple of days since my Lessig's Challenge page went up on Slashdot. It was posted in the early morning so the number of hits wasn't what it could've been (Most of my co-workers didn't even see it). I hesitate to think what my inbox would look like if it'd been posted at noon.

I've received a number of very good responses (even and email from Lessig himself!). I'll post a few excerpts here.

My favorite negative response so far has been the 450 word essay about the futility and irrelevance of Lessig's Challenge from an old high school debate sparring partner, followed closely by my shortest negative response, which reads in whole: "WHAT THE FUCK IS EFF?????????????" (I replied: "The fuck is: http://www.eff.org").

A common theme in the emails is that my idea has motivated people to help out. Paul Curry wrote, "I think you have motivated a lot of folks, myself included, to do more." Kathy Tafel says, "thanks for helping me get off my butt and do something!" Brad Kuhn of the FSF writes on his Lessig's Challenge page:

That Slashdot story was one week to the day after an FSF fund-raiser in Boston, where I watched Eben Moglen (who gives many hours of volunteer time a week to FSF) write a $20,000 check to the Foundation. After all this, I knew that simply donating time -- however substantial -- was not enough.

It's hard to think of people who've done more for the FSF than Brad Kuhn or Eben Moglen. But even they are donating money. That's amazing!

Together, we are powerful. Don't underestimate the power of a simple idea with a catchy name.