Lawrence Lessig Quotes

• While the creative works from the 16th century can still be accessed and used by others, the data in some software programs from the 1990s is already inaccessible.

  Lawrence Lessig

  Topics in Uncategorized

• We have a massive system to regulate creativity. A massive system of lawyers regulating creativity as copyright law has expanded in unrecognizable forms, going from a regulation of publishing to a regulation of copying.

  Lawrence Lessig

  Topics in Uncategorized

• This does not mean that every copyright must prove its value initially. That would be a far too cumbersome system of control. But it does mean that every system or category of copyright or patent should prove its worth.

  Lawrence Lessig

  Topics in Uncategorized

• The real harm of term extension comes not from these famous works. The real harm is to the works that are not famous, not commercially exploited, and no longer available as a result.

  Lawrence Lessig

  Topics in Uncategorized

• The danger in media concentration comes not from the concentration, but instead from the feudalism that this concentration, tied to the change in copyright, produces.

  Lawrence Lessig

  Topics in Uncategorized

• So uncritically do we accept the idea of property in culture that we don’t even question when the control of that property removes our ability, as a people, to develop our culture democratically.

  Lawrence Lessig

  Topics in Uncategorized

• Remember the refrain: We always build on the past; the past always tries to stop us. Freedom is about stopping the past, but we have lost that ideal.

  Lawrence Lessig

  Topics in Uncategorized

• Power runs with ideas that only the crazy would draw into doubt.

  Lawrence Lessig

  Topics in Uncategorized

• Of all the creative work produced by humans anywhere, a tiny fraction has continuing commercial value. For that tiny fraction, the copyright is a crucially important legal device.

  Lawrence Lessig

  Topics in Uncategorized

• Now that copyrights can be just about a century long, the inability to know what is protected and what is not protected becomes a huge and obvious burden on the creative process.

  Lawrence Lessig

  Topics in Uncategorized

• Notwithstanding the fact that the most innovative and progressive space we’ve seen – the Internet – has been the place where intellectual property has been least respected. You know, facts don’t get in the way of this ideology.

  Lawrence Lessig

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Respected, Progressive

• Monopoly controls have been the exception in free societies; they have been the rule in closed societies.

  Lawrence Lessig

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Monopoly, Societies

• In these times, the hardest task for social or political activists is to find a way to get people to wonder again about what we all believe is true. The challenge is to sow doubt.

  Lawrence Lessig

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Sow, Task

• If the only way a library can offer an Internet exhibit about the New Deal is to hire a lawyer to clear the rights to every image and sound, then the copyright system is burdening creativity in a way that has never been seen before because there are no formalities.

  Lawrence Lessig

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Library, Lawyer

• If the Internet teaches us anything, it is that great value comes from leaving core resources in a commons, where they’re free for people to build upon as they see fit.

  Lawrence Lessig

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Resources, Core

• Copyrights have not expired, and will not expire, so long as Congress is free to be bought to extend them again.

  Lawrence Lessig

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Again, Congress

• Believing we know what makes prosperity work, ignoring the nature of the actual prosperity all around, we change the rules within which the Internet revolution lives. These changes will end the revolution.

  Lawrence Lessig

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Prosperity, Ignoring

• Before the monopoly should be permitted, there must be reason to believe it will do some good – for society, and not just for monopoly holders.

  Lawrence Lessig

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Monopoly, Permitted

• As we’ve seen, our constitutional system requires limits on copyright as a way to assure that copyright holders do not too heavily influence the development and distribution of our culture.

  Lawrence Lessig

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Distribution, Development

• Americans have been selling this view around the world: that progress comes from perfect protection of intellectual property.

  Lawrence Lessig

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Property, Protection

Lawrence Lessig (27)

Birth:	3rd June, 1961
Nationality:	American
Profession:	Author, Lawyer, Professor

Related Authors

• Jonathan Lockwood Huie
• Andrew Gross
• Shannon L. Alder
• Bernard Iddings Bell
• Frederica Mathewes-Green
• Hal Borland
• Philip D. Halfacre
• A.P. Martinich
• Christopher Paolini
• Cindy Woodsmall

Advertisement

Today's Anniversary - 25th March

Births

• 1906 - A. J. P. Taylor
• 1912 - Melita Norwood
• 1931 - Thomas Wilson
• 1914 - Norman Ernest Borlaug
• 1965 - Sarah Jessica Parker

Deaths

• 1980 - Milton H. Erickson
• 1983 - Thomas S. Gates Jr.
• 1976 - Josef Albers
• 1969 - Max Eastman
• 1977 - Nunnally Johnson