Prof's defamation suit aims to go beyond holding NY Times to account.

Byline: Kris Olson

Sue The New York Times, save the law.

If you do not immediately see the connection, Harvard Law professor Lawrence Lessig suggests you listen to his new podcast and perhaps even volunteer to be a guest.

Connecting the two ideas begins with realizing that, whatever else happens with Lessig's defamation suit, one thing is almost certain: More than a few billable hours will be racked up resolving seemingly straightforward questions.

Lessig says the lawsuit and specifically the idea that "99 percent of the world" has no opportunity to bring such a claim led to the conclusion that his "next big work project" should be exploring why the legal system is failing to serve the interests of ordinary people.

But in addition to providing fodder for his new podcast, "The Law, such as it is," and maybe eventually a book, Lessig hopes that the case will result in official recognition of a newly evolved subspecies of defamation, which Lessig has dubbed "clickbait defamation."

Lessig alleges The Times mischaracterized positions he had taken in a 3,500-word essay on the website Medium, in which he reflects on the resignation of his friend, Joichi "Joi" Ito, as director of the MIT Media Lab, after it was revealed that Ito had sought the financial support of convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

Particularly problematic, Lessig says, is that those misrepresentations appeared in the headline and lead of the Sept. 14, 2019, story, which may well be all most readers ever saw of the story, either because they did not seek out the rest of it or were blocked by a pay wall.

As one might imagine with a piece of such length, Lessig had a multi-pronged message on Medium: dispel the notion that Ito was a rogue actor and argue that he was being unfairly scapegoated, while counteracting a rising drumbeat that MIT's lack of transparency had compounded the harm done by accepting donations from Epstein.

Lessig's position is that, to the extent universities accept money from criminals and other questionable characters, like the Sacklers or Koch brothers, they should do so anonymously, lest they be used as a tool to launder the donors' reputations. But undeniably, Lessig also stresses that he had come to believe that taking Epstein's money was a mistake.

After introducing that idea early in the essay, Lessig returns to it later, saying that he and Ito had "missed the great risk of great harm that [Epstein's] gift would create." He called it a "ticking time...