Lawrence Lessig quotes

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)
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. View quote
Lawrence Lessig
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. View quote
Lawrence Lessig
When government disappears, it's not as if paradise will take its place. When governments are gone, other interests will take their place. View quote
Lawrence Lessig
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. View quote
Lawrence Lessig
A free culture has been our past, but it will only be our future if we change the path we are on right now. View quote
Lawrence Lessig
In these times, the hardest task for social or political activists is to find a way to get people to wonder again about what we all believe is true. The challenge is to sow doubt. View quote
Lawrence Lessig
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. View quote
Lawrence Lessig
All around us are the consequences of the most significant technological, and hence cultural, revolution in generations. View quote
Lawrence Lessig
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. View quote
Lawrence Lessig
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)
Law and technology produce, together, a kind of regulation of creativity we've not seen before. View quote
Lawrence Lessig
A time is marked not so much by ideas that are argued about as by ideas that are taken for granted. The character of an era hangs upon what needs no defense. View quote
Lawrence Lessig
We are on the cusp of this time where I can say, "I speak as a citizen of the world" without others saying, "God, what a nut." View quote
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. View quote
Lawrence Lessig
Monopoly controls have been the exception in free societies; they have been the rule in closed societies. View quote
Lawrence Lessig
If the only way a library can offer an Internet exhibit about the New Deal is to hire a lawyer to clear the rights to every image and sound, then the copyright system is burdening creativity in a way that has never been seen before because there are no formalities. View quote
Lawrence Lessig
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. View quote
Lawrence Lessig
"Writing" is the Latin of our times. The modern language of the people is video and sound. View quote
Lawrence Lessig
It's a bumper sticker culture. People have to get it like that, and if they don't, if it takes three seconds to make them understand, you're off their radar screen. Three seconds to understand, or you lose. This is our problem. View quote
Lawrence Lessig
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)
I'm a lawyer. I make lawyers for a living. I believe in the law. I believe in the law of copyright. Indeed, I have devoted my life to working in law, not because there are big bucks at the end but because there are ideals at the end that I would love to live. Yet much of this book has been a criticism of lawyers, or the role lawyers have played in this debate. The law speaks to ideals, but it is my view that our profession has become too attuned to the client. And in a world where the rich clients have one strong view, the unwillingness of the profession to question or counter that one strong view queers the law. The evidence of this bending is compelling. I'm attacked as a "radical" by many within the profession, yet the positions that I am advocating are precisely the positions of some of the most moderate and significant figures in the history of this branch of the law. View quote
Lawrence Lessig
I've told a dark story. The truth is more mixed. A technology has given us a new freedom. Slowly, some begin to understand that this freedom need not mean anarchy. We can carry a free culture into the twenty-first century, without artists losing and without the potential of digital technology being destroyed. ... Common sense must revolt. It must act to free culture. Soon, if this potential is ever to be realized. View quote
Lawrence Lessig
Creation always involves building upon something else. There is no art that doesn't reuse. And there will be less art if every reuse is taxed by the appropriator. Monopoly controls have been the exception in free societies; they have been the rule in closed societies. View quote
Lawrence Lessig
The current term of protection for software is the life of an author plus 70 years, or, if it's work-for-hire, a total of 95 years. This is a bastardization of the Constitution's requirement that copyright be for "limited times." 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. View quote
Lawrence Lessig