Lawrence Lessig Quotes - Page 4

Quotes about:

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

  Lawrence Lessig

  Aggravation, Long, Congress

  Lawrence Lessig “Free Culture”, Lulu.com

  7 Copy quote

• [Conservatives] go to church, they do lots of things for free for each other. They hold potluck dinners. ... They serve food to poor people. They share, they give, they give away for free. It's the very same people leading Wall Street firms who, on Sundays, show up and share.

  Lawrence Lessig

  Wall, Motivation, Inspiration

  14 Copy quote

• All around us are the consequences of the most significant technological, and hence cultural, revolution in generations.

  Lawrence Lessig

  Generations, Revolution, Significant

  Lawrence Lessig (2002). “The Future of Ideas: The Fate of the Commons in a Connected World”, p.5, Vintage

  8 Copy quote

• It might be crazy to expect a high government official to speak the truth. It might be crazy to believe that government policy will be something more than the handmaiden of the most powerful interests. It might be crazy to argue that we should preserve a tradition that has been part of our tradition for most of our history -- free culture. If this is crazy, then let there be more crazies. Soon.

  Lawrence Lessig

  Powerful, Crazy, Believe

  Lawrence Lessig “Free Culture”, Lulu.com

  4 Copy quote

• 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. 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. 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

  Believe, Mean, Patents

  "May the Source Be With You". www.wired.com. December 21, 2001.

  4 Copy quote

• The legal system doesn't work. Or more accurately, it doesn't work for anyone except those with the most resources. Not because the system is corrupt. I don't think our legal system (at the federal level, at least) is at all corrupt. I mean simply because the costs of our legal system are so astonishingly high that justice can practically never be done.

  Lawrence Lessig

  Mean, Thinking, Justice

  "Free Culture". Book by Lawrence Lessig, 2004.

  4 Copy quote

• Creativity and innovation always builds on the past. The past always tries to control the creativity that builds upon it. Free societies enable the future by limiting this power of the past. Ours is less and less a free society.

  Lawrence Lessig

  Creativity, Past, Innovation

  Keynote address at the Open Source Convention, July 24, 2002.

  4 Copy quote

• I think the reality is that copyright law has for a very long time been a tiny little part of American jurisprudence, far removed from traditional First Amendment jurisprudence, and that made sense before the Internet. Now there is an unavoidable link between First Amendment interests and the scope of copyright law. The legal system is recognizing for the first time the extraordinary expanse of copyright regulation and its regulation of ordinary free-speech activities.

  Lawrence Lessig

  Reality, Thinking, Law

  4 Copy quote

• As more and more citizens express what they think, and defend it in writing, that will change the way people understand public issues. It is easy to be wrong and misguided in your head. It is harder when the product of your mind can be criticized by others. Of course, it is a rare human who admits that he has been persuaded that he is wrong. But it is even rarer for a human to ignore when he has been proven wrong. The writing of ideas, arguments, and criticism improves democracy.

  Lawrence Lessig

  Writing, Thinking, Ideas

  Lawrence Lessig “Free Culture”, Lulu.com

  5 Copy quote

• There are very few people in our society who are actually free to say what they believe. I am in an extremely fortunate position in having this enormous gift of freedom and believe I should try to use it to do something useful for society. As long as I feel as if I have something to say, I’ll continue to try to do that.

  Lawrence Lessig

  Believe, Long, People

  WIPO Magazine Interview, www.wipo.int. February 2011.

  4 Copy quote

• If there were two candidates, a Democrat and a Republican, who each committed to the same kind of fundamental reform, then the election would be an election between the vice presidential candidates. It'd be just like the regular election, except it would be one step down.

  Lawrence Lessig

  Two, Presidential, Vices

  "Lawrence Lessig Has a 'Moonshot' Plan to Halt Our Slide Toward Plutocracy". Interview with Joshua Holland, billmoyers.com. April 25, 2014.

  4 Copy quote

• 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

  Ideas, People, Culture

  Lawrence Lessig (2004). “Free Culture: The Nature and Future of Creativity”, p.192, Penguin

  4 Copy quote

• 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

  Media, Danger, Produce

  Lawrence Lessig “Free Culture”, Lulu.com

  84 Copy quote

• If the law imposed the death penalty for parking tickets, we'd not only have fewer parking tickets, we'd also have much less driving.

  Lawrence Lessig

  Law, Tickets, Death Penalty

  Lawrence Lessig (2004). “Free Culture: How Big Media Uses Technology and the Law to Lock Down Culture and Control Creativity”, p.192, Penguin

  4 Copy quote

• The crystal ball has a question mark in its center. There are some fundamental choices to be made. We will either choose to continue to wage a hopeless war to preserve the existing architecture for copyright by upping the stakes and using better weapons to make sure that people respect it. If we do this, public support for copyright will continue to weaken, pushing creativity underground and producing a generation that is alienated from the copyright concept.

  Lawrence Lessig

  War, Creativity, People

  WIPO Magazine Interview, www.wipo.int. February, 2011.

  4 Copy quote

• While appropriation art is critical to art, it's an ambiguous art form in the world of the Supreme Court.

  Lawrence Lessig

  Art, World, Form

  4 Copy quote

• 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

  Mean, Patents, Doe

  "May the Source Be With You". Wired, December 9, 2001.

  7 Copy quote

• Lawyers rarely test their power, or the power they promote, against this simple pragmatic question: "Will it do good?" When challenged about the expanding reach of the law, the lawyer answers, "Why not?

  Lawrence Lessig

  Simple, Law, Why Not

  Lawrence Lessig (2004). “Free Culture: How Big Media Uses Technology and the Law to Lock Down Culture and Control Creativity”, p.306, Penguin

  4 Copy quote

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

  Lawrence Lessig

  Running, Crazy, Ideas

  Lawrence Lessig (2002). “The Future of Ideas: The Fate of the Commons in a Connected World”, p.5, Vintage

  7 Copy quote

• 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

  Past, Trying, Stopping

  Keynote address at the Open Source Convention, July 24, 2002.

  8 Copy quote

• A free culture is not a culture without property; it is not a culture in which artists don't get paid. A culture without property, or in which creators can't get paid, is anarchy, not freedom. Anarchy is not what I advance here. Instead, the free culture that I defend in this book is a balance between anarchy and control.

  Lawrence Lessig

  Book, Artist, Balance

  Lawrence Lessig (2016). “Free Culture”, p.6, Lulu Press, Inc

  4 Copy quote

• Politics is that rare sport where the amateur contest is actually more interesting than the professional.

  Lawrence Lessig

  Sports, Interesting, Contests

  Lawrence Lessig (2011). “Republic, Lost: How Money Corrupts Congress--and a Plan to Stop It”, p.224, Hachette UK

  4 Copy quote

• One theme of what I've been writing has been to get people to understand that "apolitical" means "you lose." It doesn't mean you live a utopian life free of politicians' influence. The destruction of the public domain is the clearest example, but it will only be the first.

  Lawrence Lessig

  Writing, Mean, People

  10 Copy quote

• Creativity builds upon the public domain. The battle that we're fighting now is about whether the public domain will continue to be fed by creative works after their copyright expires. That has been our tradition but that tradition has been perverted in the last generation. We're trying to use the Constitution to reestablish what has always been taken for granted--that the public domain would grow each year with new creative work.

  Lawrence Lessig

  Taken, Creativity, Fighting

  4 Copy quote

• For however much the state may gain by not having to fund roads on its own, society would lose in aggregate if the open commons of transportation were lost.

  Lawrence Lessig

  May, Gains, Lost

  4 Copy quote

Page 4 of 5

First

← Prev

1

2

3

4

5

Next →

• facebook
• twitter
• googleplus
• email
• linkedin