IIT Chicago-Kent Professor Ed Lee to Discuss “How People Defeated Hollywood and Saved the Internet--for Now”

Edward Lee, IIT Chicago-Kent professor and director of its Program in Intellectual Property Law, will address the topic "The Fight for the Future: How People Defeated Hollywood and Saved the Internet—For Now." Professor Lee's presentation will begin at 2:30 p.m. on September 25 in the Chicago Cultural Center's Claudia Cassidy Theater, 77 East Randolph Street (between Michigan and Wabash avenues) in Chicago. The event, which is hosted by IIT Chicago-Kent, is part of Social Media Week Chicago, a series of programs held at various venues throughout the city that focus on "meaningful ideas, trends, and best practices with regard to technology and social media's impact on business, society and culture."

Wikipedia went dark on January 18, 2012. So did thousands of other websites, including search giant Google. The blackout was the biggest Internet protest in history. Facebook, Twitter, and other social media were used to organize and launch protests throughout the world against Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA), two controversial copyright proposals in the United States and European Union that opponents feared would lead to Internet censorship.

Professor Lee's presentation, whose title is taken from his new ebook, will explain 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." He will further discuss how people used the Internet in their fight for online freedom in their efforts to clamp down on online piracy at all costs.

A member of the IIT Chicago-Kent faculty since 2010, Professor Lee teaches courses in international intellectual property law, copyright law and trademark law. A Norman and Edna Freehling Scholar, his research focuses on the ways in which the Internet, technological development, and globalization challenge existing legal paradigms. Professor Lee also writes extensively about the Framers' understanding of the Free Press Clause as a limit on using the Copyright Clause to restrict technologies. In addition to numerous law review articles, he co-authored a leading casebook with Daniel Chow titled International Intellectual Property: Problems, Cases, and Materials (West Group 2006). Professor Lee is a frequent contributor to The Huffington Post.

Professor Lee graduated Phi Beta Kappa and summa cum laude from Williams College with a bachelor's degree in philosophy and classics. He is a cum laude graduate of Harvard Law School, where he was an editor and co-chair of the books and commentaries office of the Harvard Law Review.

Prior to joining IIT Chicago-Kent faculty, Professor Lee was a professor at The Ohio State University Moritz College of Law. He has served as a legal writing instructor at Stanford Law School and as an attorney at Stanford's Center for Internet and Society, where he supervised students involved in public interest litigation related to law and technology and the Internet. He has also been a litigation associate in the Washington, D.C., office of Mayer, Brown & Platt, working at all levels of trial and appellate litigation — including cases before the U.S. Supreme Court.

Professor Lee's Social Media Week Chicago presentation is free, but registration is required.

IIT Chicago-Kent College of Law is the law school of Illinois Institute of Technology, a private, Ph.D.-granting institution with programs in engineering, psychology, architecture, business, design and law. IIT Chicago-Kent currently offers a J.D. certificate program in intellectual property law and in 2002 became the first American law school to offer a one-year LL.M. degree in International Intellectual Property Law.