Quotes by Lawrence Lessig

About Lawrence Lessig:

Lawrence "Larry" Lessig is an American academic, political activist, and attorney. He is the Roy L. Furman Professor of Law at Harvard Law School and the director of the Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics at Harvard University. As an attorney, he is a member of the Illinois Bar. Lessig is a candidate for the Democratic Party's nomination for president in the 2016 U.S. presidential election.
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

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 ...

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

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

Lawrence Lessig

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. The question is what we're capable of knowing, and d...

Lawrence Lessig

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

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

Lawrence Lessig

Believing we know what makes prosperity work, ignoring the nature of the actual prosperity all around, we change the rules within which the Internet revolution lives. These changes will end the revolution.

Lawrence Lessig

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

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

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

If the Internet teaches us anything, it is that great value comes from leaving core resources in a commons, where they're free for people to build upon as they see fit.

Lawrence Lessig

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

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

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

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

By the time Apple's Macintosh operating system finally falls into the public domain, there will be no machine that could possibly run it. The term of copyright for software is effectively unlimited.

Lawrence Lessig

Power runs with ideas that only the crazy would draw into doubt.

Lawrence Lessig

Author Bio

  • NameLawrence Lessig
  • DescriptionAmerican academic, political activist. Founder, Stanford Center for Internet and Society, Creative Commons. Proponent of reduced legal restrictions on copyright, trademark, radio frequency spectrum, esp. in technology applications.
  • AliasesLarry Lessig
  • BornJune 3, 1961
  • CountryUnited States Of America
  • ProfessionJurist
  • AwardsWebby Lifetime Achievement Award