Lester Lawrence Lessig III is an American academic, attorney, and political activist. He is the Roy L. Furman Professor of Law at Harvard Law School and the former director of the Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics at Harvard University. Lessig was a candidate for the Democratic Party's nomination for president of the United States in the 2016 U.S. presidential election but withdrew before the primaries.
Cornell Law School is the law school of Cornell University, a private Ivy League university in Ithaca, New York. One of the five Ivy League law schools, it offers four law degree programs, JD, LLM, MSLS and JSD, along with several dual-degree programs in conjunction with other professional schools at the university. Established in 1887 as Cornell's Department of Law, the school today is one of the smallest top-tier JD-conferring institutions in the country, with around 200 students graduating each year. Since its inception, Cornell Law School has always ranked among the top 14 law schools in the nation, known as the T14.
Lloyd Alton Doggett II is an American attorney and politician who is a U.S. representative from Texas. A member of the Democratic Party, he has represented a district based in Austin since 1995, currently numbered as Texas's 35th congressional district. Doggett is the only Democrat to represent any part of Austin in Congress.
The National Taxpayers Union (NTU) is a fiscally conservative taxpayer advocacy organization and taxpayers union in the United States, founded in 1977 by James Dale Davidson. NTU says that it is the oldest taxpayer advocacy organization in the nation. It is closely affiliated with a non-profit foundation, the National Taxpayers Union Foundation (NTUF). The organization has ranked politicians on their perceived fiscal responsibility, in the eyes of the National Taxpayers Union.
Center for Democracy & Technology (CDT) is a Washington, D.C.-based 501(c)(3) nonprofit. The organization which focuses on topics such as the rights of individual users in relation to technology policy, with the potential to affect the architecture of the Internet. The CDT has established a set of five key objectives which the organization is centered around. As described on the organization’s website, their first objective is to focus on promoting any legislation that may enable individuals to use technology for purposes of well-intent, while at the same time preventing its usage for harmful purposes. CDT’s second objective is to advocate for transparency, accountability, and a regard for human rights in the context of online platforms; this objective places a particular emphasis on setting a precedent for limiting the collection of the personal information of the average user. CDT’s third objective is to mitigate issues of online media censorship by governments, along with enabling individuals to access information freely without retaliation or punishment. Their fourth objective is to limit the ability of governments to perform surveillance activities on citizens. Lastly, their fifth objective is to highlight the importance of maintaining and supporting the globalized nature of the internet. These objectives are further defined within in the CDT’s six areas of focus including, Cybersecurity and standards, Equity in civic technology, free expression, government surveillance, open internet, privacy, and data.
David Adam Segal is an American politician, activist, and writer who was a Democratic member of the Rhode Island House of Representatives, representing District 2 from 2007 until January 2011. Prior to that, he served as Minority Leader of the Providence City Council from 2003 until 2007, elected at the age of 22 as the first and only member of the Green Party ever elected in Rhode Island. Segal was a candidate for the U.S. House of Representatives in the state's 1st congressional district on 14 September 2010. He serves as the executive director of the online organizing group Demand Progress. The organization helped lead the fight against the Stop Online Piracy Act and related bills, co-led efforts to institute net neutrality regulations, and has been at the forefront of various other policy and activism efforts.
The Office of Technology Assessment (OTA) was an office of the United States Congress that operated from 1974 to 1995. OTA's purpose was to provide congressional members and committees with objective and authoritative analysis of the complex scientific and technical issues of the late 20th century, i.e. technology assessment. It was a leader in practicing and encouraging delivery of public services in innovative and inexpensive ways, including early involvement in the distribution of government documents through electronic publishing. Its model was widely copied around the world.
Wendy Seltzer is an American attorney and a staff member at the World Wide Web Consortium, where she is the chair of the Improving Web Advertising Business Group. She was previously with Princeton's Center for Information Technology Policy. Seltzer is also a Fellow with Harvard's Berkman Center for Internet & Society, where she founded and leads the Lumen clearinghouse, which is aimed at helping Internet users to understand their rights in response to cease-and-desist threats related to intellectual property and other legal demands.
The Sunlight Foundation was an American 501(c)(3) nonpartisan, nonprofit organization that advocated for open government. The organization was founded in April 2006 with the goal of increasing transparency and accountability in the United States Congress, the executive branch, and in state and local governments. The foundation's primary focus was the role of money in politics. The organization sought to increase campaign finance regulations and disclosure requirements. The Sunlight Foundation ceased operations in September 2020.
Open government is the governing doctrine which sustain that citizens have the right to access the documents and proceedings of the government to allow for effective public oversight. In its broadest construction, it opposes reason of state and other considerations which have tended to legitimize extensive state secrecy. The origins of open-government arguments can be dated to the time of the European Age of Enlightenment, when philosophers debated the proper construction of a then nascent democratic society. It is also increasingly being associated with the concept of democratic reform. The United Nations Sustainable Development Goal 16 for example advocates for public access to information as a criterion for ensuring accountable and inclusive institutions.
Metavid is a free-software wiki-based community archive project for audio video media. The site hosts public domain US legislative footage. It was started as a Digital Arts/New Media MFA thesis project of Michael Dale and Abram Stern under the advisement of Professor Warren Sack in late 2005 at the University of California, Santa Cruz. Its continued development is supported by a grant from the Sunlight Foundation. It works by using a "simple Linux box to record everything that C-SPAN shoots", which can then be used to provide "brief searchable clips using closed-captioning text".
The Participatory Politics Foundation (PPF) is a United States non-profit organization which jointly operates the OpenCongress.org website. Intended to connect citizens to lawmakers to increase public participation with the government, the non-partisan foundation hopes to modernize the political system through technological advancements to increase civic engagement in government. The non-profit opened in February 2007 and operates OpenCongress together with the Sunlight Foundation.
C-SPAN Video Library is the audio and video streaming website of C-SPAN, the American legislative broadcaster. The site offers a complete, freely accessible archive going back to 1987. It was launched in March 2010, and was integrated into the main C-SPAN website in 2013.
Marvin Ammori is a lawyer, civil liberties advocate, and scholar best known for his work on network neutrality and Internet freedom issues. He currently serves as Chief Legal Officer of Uniswap.
Demand Progress is an internet activist-related entity encompassing a 501(c)4 arm sponsored by the Sixteen Thirty Fund and a 501(c)3 arm sponsored by the New Venture Fund. It specializes in online-intensive and other grassroots activism to support Internet freedom, civil liberties, transparency, and human rights, and in opposition to censorship and corporate control of government. The organization was founded through a petition in opposition to the Combating Online Infringement and Counterfeits Act, sparking the movement that eventually defeated COICA's successor bills, the Stop Online Piracy Act and the PROTECT IP Act, two highly controversial pieces of United States legislation.
Daniel Alpert is an American investment banker, adjunct professor at Cornell Law School, commentator and author. He is a co-creator of the United States Private Sector Job Quality Index, an economic metric that measures of higher wage versus lower wage private sector jobs, and the author of The Age of Oversupply: Confronting the Greatest Challenge to the Global Economy. Alpert is a founding partner of Westwood Capital LLC, an investment firm based in New York, and an adviser to the Coalition for a Prosperous America. Alpert is a member of the World Economic Roundtable.
The OpenGov Foundation is a United States non-partisan, non-profit organization that bridges the gap between citizens and government with modern technology, data and design thinking. The organization conducts user-centered research inside legislatures like the United States Congress, develops software for those who serve in government, and helps governments create policies and rules that support openness and effective engagement with the public.
Robert C. Hockett is an American lawyer, law professor, and policy advocate. He holds two positions at Cornell University, is senior counsel at investment firm Westwood Capital, LLC, and was a Fellow at The Century Foundation think tank. As of 2019, he is advising Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez on the Green New Deal.
Nanette Díaz Barragán is an American attorney and politician serving as the U.S. representative for California's 44th congressional district since 2017. A member of the Democratic Party, she was a Hermosa Beach City councilmember from 2013 to 2015.
Miriam W. Yeung is the former executive director of the National Asian Pacific American Women's Forum, former Director of Public Policy and Government Relations at the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Community Center in New York City, affiliate of the Social Transformation Project, and co-founder/co-chair/delegate for the We Belong Together Campaign. In 2017, she served as Smith College's Activist-in-Residence. She has served on the boards of Queers for Economic Justice and Generations Ahead, acted as a spokesperson for the National Coalition for Immigrant Women’s Rights, and has written for Open Society Foundations, Huffington Post, Washington Post, and scholarly journals, including Barnard Center for Research on Women's Scholar & Feminist Online and UC Berkeley's California Journal of Politics and Policy.
