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All Lawrence Lessig Quotes
A free culture has been our past, but it will only be our future if we change the path we are on right now.
Lawrence Lessig
58% of people like this quote
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
57% of people like this quote
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
56% of people like this quote
Remember the refrain: We always build on the past; the past always tries to stop us. Freedom is about stopping the past, but we have lost that ideal.
Lawrence Lessig
56% of people like this quote
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
55% of people like this quote
The real harm of term extension comes not from these famous works. The real harm is to the works that are not famous, not commercially exploited, and no longer available as a result.
Lawrence Lessig
55% of people like this quote
The danger in media concentration comes not from the concentration, but instead from the feudalism that this concentration, tied to the change in copyright, produces.
Lawrence Lessig
55% of people like this quote
Power runs with ideas that only the crazy would draw into doubt.
Lawrence Lessig
55% of people like this quote
When government disappears, it's not as if paradise will take its place. When governments are gone, other interests will take their place.
Lawrence Lessig
54% of people like this quote
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.
Lawrence Lessig
53% of people like this quote
A free culture is not a culture without property; it is not a culture in which artists don't get paid.
Lawrence Lessig
53% of people like this quote
Monopoly controls have been the exception in free societies; they have been the rule in closed societies.
Lawrence Lessig
52% of people like this quote
All around us are the consequences of the most significant technological, and hence cultural, revolution in generations.
Lawrence Lessig
52% of people like this quote
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
52% of people like this quote
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
52% of people like this quote
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