I dunno. Lessig's description of the case seems overly generous to Joi. For starters, he claims Joi's private defense to him was that he'd heavily researched Epstein's behavior and made a personal call that he was reformed and should be given a second chance. That might be a decent defense if Joi had actually made it publically, but its basically the opposite of what Joi said in his attempt at an apology, where he basically claimed to be in the dark regarding Epstein's behavior.
Secondly, he makes it sound like Joi wanted to keep Epstein's contributions secret to keep Epstein from getting any benefit from them. But almost all the reporting on the issue make it pretty clear that Epstein used the donations, and his relationship with Joi, to publically associate himself with the lab, visit the researchers there, present himself to Gates and others as an unofficial go-between, etc. The relationship went far beyond Epstein cutting a check and no one knowing about it.
Thirdly, Lessig's defense is largely based on the claim that Farrow's reporting is factually incorrect, and that MIT told him to take the $, and thus Joi was making a moral compromise in service of his employer. We'll have to wait and see if he or Farrow is correct here, but Farrow's article was obviously drawing on internal MIT docs, so I'd be pretty surprised if that was the case.
Finally, Lessig skips over the fact that Joi took on the order of a million dollars from Epstein for his personal projects. This makes the claim that Joi was just doing what MIT told him to do pretty weak. It also bypasses what I thought was the most damning implication of the Farrow article, which was that Epstein basically bribed Joi to help him get around MIT's prohibition on taking his money.
Secondly, he makes it sound like Joi wanted to keep Epstein's contributions secret to keep Epstein from getting any benefit from them. But almost all the reporting on the issue make it pretty clear that Epstein used the donations, and his relationship with Joi, to publically associate himself with the lab, visit the researchers there, present himself to Gates and others as an unofficial go-between, etc. The relationship went far beyond Epstein cutting a check and no one knowing about it.
Thirdly, Lessig's defense is largely based on the claim that Farrow's reporting is factually incorrect, and that MIT told him to take the $, and thus Joi was making a moral compromise in service of his employer. We'll have to wait and see if he or Farrow is correct here, but Farrow's article was obviously drawing on internal MIT docs, so I'd be pretty surprised if that was the case.
Finally, Lessig skips over the fact that Joi took on the order of a million dollars from Epstein for his personal projects. This makes the claim that Joi was just doing what MIT told him to do pretty weak. It also bypasses what I thought was the most damning implication of the Farrow article, which was that Epstein basically bribed Joi to help him get around MIT's prohibition on taking his money.