Copyright Law Quotes

• Only one thing is impossible for God: To find any sense in any copyright law on the planet.

  Mark Twain

  Funny, Life, God

  Mark Twain (2012). “Mark Twain at Your Fingertips: A Book of Quotations”, p.69, Courier Corporation

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• Whenever a copyright law is to be made or altered, then the idiots assemble.

  Mark Twain

  Law, Idiot, Made

  Mark Twain, Caroline Thomas Harnsberger (2009). “Mark Twain at Your Fingertips: A Book of Quotations”, p.69, Courier Corporation

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• Congress shall have Power . . . to promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Time to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries.

  James Madison

  Education, Art, Writing

  Thomas Paine, Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, John Jay (2017). “The Origin of the Nation: Declaration of Independence, Constitution, Bill of Rights and Other Amendments, Federalist Papers & Common Sense: Creating America - Landmark Documents that Shaped a New Nation”, p.508, Madison & Adams Press

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• Copyright law is a dinosaur, ill-suited for the landscape of today's media.

  Kaskade

  Media, Law, Dinosaurs

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• 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

  Creativity, Law, Copying

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

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• It's the golden age of French cinema again but it's because Sarkozy had the guts to push through copyright law.

  Harvey Weinstein

  Birthday, Law, Age

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• The Pirate Party started in Sweden in 2006, and it only had one agenda: to change draconian copyright laws. But it's changed and shifted primarily because the questions of human rights and cyber have become much more relevant. So if you want to place it somewhere on the spectrum, I would say it's a party that has its roots in civilian rights. But we are not like many left parties that want to regulate citizens and create nanny states. We believe that regulation should be on the powerful, not the individuals.

  Birgitta Jonsdottir

  Powerful, Party, Believe

  Source: www.washingtonpost.com

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• From what I understand about Shakespeare - which isn't a lot - there was no copyright law when he was writing. He sampled at will, and it wasn't seen as a bad thing.

  Mike Posner

  Writing, Law, Copyright

  Source: www.billboard.com

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• Fair use is a part of United States copyright law. You don't know if it falls under fair use until you go to court. Someone has to sue you and then you have to challenge it.

  Girl Talk

  Fall, Law, Challenges

  Source: uproxx.com

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• National law has no place in cyberlaw. Where is cyberspace? If you don't like banking laws in the United States, set up your machine on the Grand Cayman Islands. Don't like the copyright laws in the United States? Set up your machine in China. Cyberlaw is global law, which is not going to be easy to handle, since we seemingly cannot even agree on world trade of automobile parts.

  Nicholas Negroponte

  Islands, Law, United States

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• We established a regime that left creativity unregulated. Now it was unregulated because copyright law only covered "printing." Copyright law did not control derivative work. And copyright law granted this protection for the limited time of 14 years.

  Lawrence Lessig

  Creativity, Years, Law

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

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• I don't agree with the copyright laws and I don't have a problem with people downloading the movie and sharing it with people as long as they're not doing it to make a profit off my labor. You share things with people and I think information, and art, and ideas should be shared.

  Michael Moore

  Art, Thinking, Ideas

  "Moore: Pirate my film, no problem" by Iain S. Bruce, Sunday Herald, July 04, 2004.

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• If I take that person and play them as a record I'm becoming not only a conductor and composer of collage, but at the same time I'm looking at a whole layer of what goes into copyright law, who owns those memories, who owns the way that that sound gets remixed and transformed and above all how much fun it is to actually just mess with other people's stuff.

  DJ Spooky

  Fun, Memories, Law

  Big Think Interview, bigthink.com. April 8, 2010.

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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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• Copyright law has got to give up its obsession with 'the copy.' The law should not regulate 'copies' or 'modern reproductions' on their own. It should instead regulate uses--like public distributions of copies of copyrighted work--that connect directly to the economic incentive copyright law was intended to foster.

  Lawrence Lessig

  Giving Up, Law, Use

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• I'm not a big believer in our copyright laws; I find them way too restrictive.

  Michael Moore

  Law, Way, Bigs

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