Lawrence Lessig Quotes

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Lawrence Lessig

Profession : Educator

Birth : June 3, 1961

A culture without property, or in which creators can't get paid, is anarchy, not freedom.

Lawrence Lessig

As we've seen, our constitutional system requires limits on copyright as a way to assure that copyright holders do not too heavily influence the development and distribution of our culture.

Lawrence Lessig

Copyrights have not expired, and will not expire, so long as Congress is free to be bought to extend them again.

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.

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.

Lawrence Lessig

So uncritically do we accept the idea of property in culture that we don't even question when the control of that property removes our ability, as a people, to develop our culture democratically.

Lawrence Lessig