Quotes from Lawrence Lessig

By the time Apple's Macintosh operating system finally falls into the public domain, there will be no machine that could possibly run it. The term of copyright for software is effectively unlimited.

In a time of polarized politics there's one thing that more than ninety percent of Americans agree on, that our government is broken, and broken because of the money in politics.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

I spend as little time with lawmakers as possible. Many are great. And more than you expect want real change. But they're not going to do anything till we, the outsiders, force them to adopt it.

The war against illegal file-sharing is like the church's age-old war against masturbation. It's a war you just can't win.

A culture without property, or in which creators can't get paid, is anarchy, not freedom.

When government disappears, it's not as if paradise will take its place. When governments are gone, other interests will take their place.

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.

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.

the candidate that gets covered is the candidate that it is most profitable to cover

For the first time that evening, a small idea was uttered by the representative of this extraordinary company. Schmidt spoke of invigorating the Google PAC, and pushing harder to get their side of the issue better heard. And I thought, Wow. This is a Google solution to this, the most important problem facing this republic? This the most they can imagine?

The question is: Which means best advances the regulator's goal, subject to the constraints (whether normative or material) that the regulator must recognize? My

I]t kind of terrified me to imagine myself spending the rest of my life tinkering on the margins of the small arguments.

Writing" is the Latin of our times. The modern language of the people is video and sound.

If my writing produces angry reactions, then it might also effect a more balanced reflection. These are hard times to get it right, but the easy answers to yesterday's debate won't get it right.

In speaking of a constitution in cyberspace we are simply asking: What values should be protected there? What values should be built into the space to encourage what forms of life?

The aim of any literacy, and this literacy in particular, is to "empower people to choose the appropriate language for what they need to create or express.

Mas apenas eleições não fazem uma democracia. Democracia quer dizer poder para o povo, mas poder quer dizer algo mais que apenas eleições. Em nossa tradição isso também significa controle através de críticas racionais.

We're building a technology that takes the magic of Kodak, mixes moving images and sound, and adds a space for commentary and an opportunity to spread that creativity everywhere. But we're building the law to close down that technology. (p. 47)