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Americans have been selling this view around the world: that progress comes from perfect protection of intellectual property.

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
Views
Perfect
Selling
Comes
Protection
Around
Property
World
Americans
Intellectual
View
Progress

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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.
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A world where Congressmen spend 30 to 70 percent of their time raising money from a tiny, tiny fraction of the 1% is a world where that tiny, tiny fraction has enormous power. And it's that inequality in political power that enables this corrupted system to happen.
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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.
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So uncritically do we accept the idea of property in ideas that we don't even notice how monstrous it is to deny ideas to a people who are dying without them.
Lawrence Lessig
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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.
Lawrence Lessig
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A culture without property, or in which creators can't get paid, is anarchy, not freedom.
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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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.
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Legislation needs a better reason than that lawyers like it, and that America does it.
Lawrence Lessig
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Why should it be that just when technology is most encouraging of creativity, the law should be most restrictive?
Lawrence Lessig
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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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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
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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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Money corrupts the process of reasoning.
Lawrence Lessig
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Every generation welcomes the pirates from the last.
Lawrence Lessig
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Some may not like the Constitution's requirements, but that doesn't make the Constitution a pirate's charter.
Lawrence Lessig
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We always build on the past the past always tries to stop us.
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Writing is the Latin of our times. The modern language of the people is video and sound.
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While appropriation art is critical to art, it's an ambiguous art form in the world of the Supreme Court.
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Creativity is enhanced by less-than-perfect control over what content is on the network.
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