Lawrence Lessig Quotes - Page 4

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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.

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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.

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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.

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As I've indicated, most books go out of print within one year. The same is true of music and film. Commercial culture is sharklike. It must keep moving. And when a creative work falls out of favor with the commercial distributors, the commercial life ends.

Lawrence Lessig

Moving, Book, Fall

Lawrence Lessig (2004). “Free Culture: The Nature and Future of Creativity”, p.167, Penguin

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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

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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

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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.

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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

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We are a cut-and-paste culture. The aim of the protectionists is to argue that a cut-and-paste culture is criminal. Well, it's only criminal if there's nothing out there that you can freely cut and paste. If we increasingly mark material as available for these non-commercial uses, then people will have the opportunity to see its importance.

Lawrence Lessig

Cutting, Opportunity, People

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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

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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

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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

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A free culture supports and protects creators and innovators. It does this directly by granting intellectual property rights. But it does so indirectly by limiting the reach of those rights, to guarantee that follow-on creators and innovators remain as free as possible from the control of the past. A free culture is not a culture without property, just as a free market is not a market in which everything is free. The opposite of a free culture is a "permission culture" -- a culture in which creators get to create only with the permission of the powerful, or of creators from the past.

Lawrence Lessig

Powerful, Past, Rights

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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

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Overregulation corrupts citizens and weakens the rule of law.

Lawrence Lessig

Law, Citizens, Rule Of Law

Lawrence Lessig (2004). “Free Culture: How Big Media Uses Technology and the Law to Lock Down Culture and Control Creativity”, p.199, Penguin

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But, like all metaphoric wars, the copyright wars are not actual conflicts of survival. Or at least, they are not conflicts for survival of a people or a society, even if they are wars of survival for certain businesses or, more accurately, business models. Thus we must keep i mind the other values or objectives that might also be affected by this war. We must make sure this war doesn't cost more than it is worth. We must be sure it is winnable, or winnable at a price we're willing to pay.

Lawrence Lessig

War, People, Survival

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Show me why your regulation of culture is needed. Show me how it does good. And until you can show me both, keep your lawyers away.

Lawrence Lessig

Doe, Culture, Regulation

Lawrence Lessig (2016). “Free Culture”, p.257, Lulu Press, Inc

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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.

Lawrence Lessig

Running, Fall, Apples

"May the Source Be With You" by Lawrence Lessig, www.wired.com. December 1, 2001.

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A free culture has been our past, but it will only be our future if we change the path we are on right now.

Lawrence Lessig

Past, Culture, Path

Lawrence Lessig “Free Culture”, Lulu.com

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[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

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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

Creative, Important, Tiny

Lawrence Lessig “Free Culture”, Lulu.com

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"The value of "one person, one vote," the value of equality, is a value that was given to us more than 50 years ago as a central part of our constitutional tradition. So, under that principle, we ought to be applying the same standard today that I would have said we should have applied a year ago."

- Lawrence Lessig,

www.truth-out.org, added Dec 5, 2016

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Lawrence Lessig

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Born: June 3, 1961
Occupation: Political activist
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