PHILADELPHIA -- The text for this year's Penn Reading Project at the University of Pennsylvania is "Free Culture: The Nature and Future of Creativity" by Lawrence Lessig.  Groups of first-year students and faculty leaders will meet to discuss the book as part of New Student Orientation at 3 p.m.  Sunday, Sept. 3.

Prior to the discussion sessions, Lessig, a 1983 Penn graduate and a law professor at Stanford University, will speak to the class in a session moderated by Provost Ron Daniels.  Penn Law School Professor R. Polk Wagner will also present.  This is the first time a panel session of this kind -- debating ideas with the Reading Project author -- has been part of NSO week.

"Free Culture" is a history of intellectual property laws, an exploration of technology and an argument to reexamine current business practices.  

In the book, Lessig points out a fundamental irony: technology has given millions of citizens a voice, a platform and unprecedented access to ideas, while at the same time, special interests and expanded laws have limited their opportunities to use these new tools.    

He argues that collective freedoms are abridged in the current system, and that new models are needed.

"The book stimulates dynamic and provocative discussion on many levels and involving many disciplines," said David Fox, director of the Penn Reading Project.

The Penn Reading project, now in its 16th year, is designed to introduce incoming freshmen to academic life at Penn.  Faculty members from all 12 of Penns schools take part as discussion leaders.