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Lawrence Lessig Quotes
born 1961 United States
Lawrence Lessig (born 3 June 1961) is an American academic and political activist. He is most famous as a proponent of reduced legal restrictions on copyright, trademark, and radio frequency spectrum, particularly in technology applications.
United States Academics Activists Bloggers Lawyers Also known as: Larry Lessig, Lessig, Lawrence
Random Lawrence Lessig quote
46 quotes
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.
May the Source Be With You (2001)
Overregulation stifles creativity. It smothers innovation. It gives dinosaurs a veto over the future. It wastes the extraordinary opportunity for a democratic creativity that digital technology enables.
Free Culture (2004)
Now you look at this and you say this is insane. It's insane.
One thing we know about incentives is you can't incent a dead person. No matter what we do, Hawthorne will not produce any more works, [even if] we can give him all the money in the world.
Law and technology produce, together, a kind of regulation of creativity we've not seen before.
Eric Eldred was fighting a piracy that affects us all.
Free Culture (2004)
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.
May the Source Be With You (2001)
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.
Free Culture (2004)
Common sense is with the copyright warriors because the debate so far has been framed at the extremes — as a grand either/or: either property or anarchy, either total control or artists won't be paid.
Free Culture (2004)
There has never been a time in history when more of our "culture" was as "owned" as it is now. And yet there has never been a time when the concentration of power to control the uses of culture has been as unquestioningly accepted as it is now.
Free Culture (2004)
The most powerful and sexy and well loved of lobbies really has as its aim not the protection of "property" but the rejection of a tradition. Their aim is not simply to protect what is theirs. Their aim is to assure that all there is is what is theirs.
Free Culture (2004)
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.
There is no such thing as the public domain in the minds of those who have produced these 11 extensions these last 40 years because now culture is owned.
I will say the word: To hell with the fair uses. What about the unregulated uses we had of culture before this massive expansion of control?
That means the world was divided into three camps, not two: Unregulated uses, regulated uses that were fair use, and the quintessential copyright world. Three categories.
In the context of software development, where you have sequential and complementary developments, patents create an extraordinarily damaging influence on innovation and on the process of developing and bringing new ideas to market.
This is not a left and right issue. This is the important thing to recognize: This is not about conservatives versus liberals.
Either of these two changes through law will produce a world where your freedom has been taken away. And, If you can't fight for your freedom . . . you don't deserve it.
Monopolies are not justified by theory; they should be permitted only when justified by facts. If there is no solid basis for extending a certain monopoly protection, then we should not extend that protection.
May the Source Be With You (2001)
We really need to think quite pragmatically about whether intellectual property is helping or hurting, and if you can't show it's going to help, then there is no reason to issue this government-backed monopoly.
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