Today musicNeutral attended Lawrence Lessig’s talk about his new project “Change Congress.”

Lessig, who founded Creative Commons in 2001, gave his last free culture speech back in January and has since then refocused his efforts on fighting corruption in Washington. Using examples and a fast-paced powerpoint-ish presentation, Lessig pointed to obvious problems that Washington has “failed” in solving: the Iraq War, global warming, copyright etc. Lessig states a “dependency on money” as the reason for these insufficient solutions. He believes politicians are sacrificing trust and quality for money.

Change Congress is seeking commitment directly from the candidates and legislators. Once taking the pledge, these politicians can embed a small “widget” on their official website making it known that they comply with Change Congress’s rules for transparency. This is similar to the approach used by Creative Commons because it’s a proactive method of getting the decision makers directly involved.

In much the same way Lessig’s Creative Commons licenses have reworked copyright law to permit the sharing of information, hopefully Change Congress can remove Washington’s dependency on corrupt money in an effort to create a higher level of trust and quality in our government.

The site is still in beta, but more info can be found here: www.change-congress.com