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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
Opportunity
Innovation
Giving
Extraordinary
Smothers
Democratic
Stifles
Waste
Veto
Creativity
Wastes
Gives
Dinosaurs
Technology
Enables
Future
Digital

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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.
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Under the principle of equality, we should get as close to respecting equal votes of every citizen as we can, given our constitutional structure. And I think if we did that, then the will of the people would not be overturned.
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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.
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I think the archaic idea is actually winner take all, because the principle of one person, one vote is a principle that was introduced as a fundamental principle in American law in 1962, long after states had moved to one person, one vote.
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In a time of polarized politics there's one thing that more than ninety percent of Americans agree on, that our government is broken, and broken because of the money in politics.
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When government disappears, its not as if paradise will take its place. When governments are gone, other interests will take their place.
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Some may not like the Constitution's requirements, but that doesn't make the Constitution a pirate's charter.
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Winner take all does not exist in the Constitution. It's a restriction imposed on the electors by the states.
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The popular choice, by more than 2 million votes, is a completely qualified candidate for president.
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I don't support direct democracy because I want a life, and that means I want to select people who work for me who do that sort of work for me.
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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.
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A culture without property, or in which creators can't get paid, is anarchy, not freedom.
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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.
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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.
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If you are explaining, you're losing. 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.
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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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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.
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My claim is that we should focus on the values of liberty... If there is not government to insist on those values, then who? ... The single unifying force should be that we govern ourselves.
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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
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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