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You and I both know that as long as our representatives are held hostage to their funders - and their funders are not all of us - our system will not work

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
Held
System
Work
Long
Funders
Hostage
Representatives

More quotes by 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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Power runs with ideas that only the crazy would draw into doubt.
Lawrence Lessig
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There is still the illusion that if we could declare corporations are not people or that money is not speech, all would be solved. Regardless of the good in those ideas, it wouldn't.
Lawrence Lessig
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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.
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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Law and technology produce, together, a kind of regulation of creativity we've not seen before.
Lawrence Lessig
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I'm pushing for citizen equality not because of some moral idea, but because this is the essential way to crack the corruption that now makes it so Washington can't work.
Lawrence Lessig
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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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I'm focused on solving the problem that would make it plausible for gov't to get back to solving real problems.
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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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.
Lawrence Lessig
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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.
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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When government disappears, its not as if paradise will take its place. When governments are gone, other interests will take their place.
Lawrence Lessig
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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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Americans have been selling this view around the world: that progress comes from perfect protection of intellectual property.
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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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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Of all the creative work produced by humans anywhere, a tiny fraction has continuing commercial value. For that tiny fraction, the copyright is a crucially important legal device.
Lawrence Lessig
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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.
Lawrence Lessig