Quotes by Lawrence Lessig

“But, like all metaphoric wars, the copyright wars are not actual conflicts of survival. Or at least, they are not conflicts for survival of a people or a society, even if they are wars of survival ...”

“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 ena...”

“Economics itself offers a parallel that explains why this integration affects creativity. Clay Christensen has written about the Innovators Dilemma: the fact that large traditional firms find it ra...”

“It is said that those who fail to remember history are doomed to repeat it. Thats not quite correct. We all forget history. The key is whether we have a way to go back to rediscover what we forget....”

“Free culture depends upon vibrant competition. Yet the effect of the law today is to stifle just this kind of competition. The effect is to produce an over-regulated culture, just as the effect of ...”

“So, ignorant we are. But we're not stupid. Indeed...remaining ignorant about politics and our government is a perfectly rational response to the government we have. The question isn't what we know....”

“[I]t kind of terrified me to imagine myself spending the rest of my life tinkering on the margins of the small arguments.”

“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 distributio...”

“Overregulation corrupts citizens and weakens the rule of law.”

“[The Internet] affects democracy... As more and more citizens express what they think, and defend it in writing, that will change the way people understand public issues. It is easy to be wrong and...”

“If piracy means using the creative property of others without their permission- if if value, then right is true- then the history of the content industry is a history of piracy. Every important sec...”

“Notwithstanding the fact that the most innovative and progressive space we've seen - the Internet - has been the place where intellectual property has been least respected. You know, facts don't ge...”

“When government disappears, it's not as if paradise will take its place. When governments are gone, other interests will take their place.”

“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.”

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

“And with a practice of writing comes a certain important integrity. A culture filled with bloggers thinks differently about politics or public affairs, if only because more have been forced through...”

“If “piracy means using the creative property of others without their permission- if “if value, then right” is true- then the history of the content industry is a history of piracy. Every important ...”

“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.”

“One thing we know about incentives is you can't incent a dead person. No matter what we do, Hawthorne will not produce any more works, [even if] we can give him all the money in the world.”

“Americans have been selling this view around the world: that progress comes from perfect protection of intellectual property. Notwithstanding the fact that the most innovative and progressive space...”