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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.

Lawrence Lessig

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Lawrence Lessig
Age: 63
Born: 1961
Born: June 3
Computer Scientist
Jurist
Lawyer
Non-Fiction Writer
Political Activist
Politician
Professor
Teacher
Rapid City
South Dakota
Larry Lessig
Lester Lawrence Lessig III
Gives
Dinosaurs
Technology
Enables
Digital
Future
Innovation
Opportunity
Extraordinary
Smothers
Giving
Democratic
Stifles
Waste
Veto
Creativity
Wastes

More quotes by Lawrence Lessig

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Believing we know what makes prosperity work, ignoring the nature of the actual prosperity all around, we change the rules within which the Internet revolution lives. These changes will end the revolution.
Lawrence Lessig
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But it is as silly to think about peer-to-peer as applying just to music as it would have been to think about the Internet as applying just to pornography. Whatever the initial use of the technology, it has nothing to do with the potential of the architecture to serve many other extremely important functions.
Lawrence Lessig
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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
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One great feature of modern society is the institutionalized respect we give to processes designed to destroy the past.
Lawrence Lessig
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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
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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
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Winner take all does not exist in the Constitution. It's a restriction imposed on the electors by the states.
Lawrence Lessig
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I don't care if the Koch brothers or Soros spend their money to promote one candidate or another. I care about members of Congress spending 30%-70% of their time raising money from .05% of us. Change the way we fund elections and you change the corruption.
Lawrence Lessig
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Every generation welcomes the pirates from the last.
Lawrence Lessig
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We always build on the past the past always tries to stop us.
Lawrence Lessig
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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.
Lawrence Lessig
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Creativity is enhanced by less-than-perfect control over what content is on the network.
Lawrence Lessig
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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
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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
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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
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The war against illegal file-sharing is like the church's age-old war against masturbation. It's a war you just can't win.
Lawrence Lessig
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I'm all for experimenting with sortition - randomly selected representative bodies of citizens. But I don't favor direct democracy. We're busy. We have lives. There is reddit. Who has time to work out the right answer to the thousand policy choices a gov't must make all the time?
Lawrence Lessig
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Money corrupts the process of reasoning.
Lawrence Lessig
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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.
Lawrence Lessig
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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