Lawrence Lessig
Lawrence Lessig
Lester Lawrence "Larry" Lessig IIIis an American academic, attorney, and political activist. He is the Roy L. Furman Professor of Law at Harvard Law School and the former director of the Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics at Harvard University. Lessig was a candidate for the Democratic Party's nomination for President of the United States in the 2016 U.S. presidential election, but withdrew before the primaries...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionEntrepreneur
Date of Birth3 June 1961
CountryUnited States of America
don't really want the court to stop the new technology. Then, like now, they simply want to be paid for the innovations of someone else. Then, like now, the content owners ought to lose.
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.
A culture without property, or in which creators can't get paid, is anarchy, not freedom.
Monopoly controls have been the exception in free societies; they have been the rule in closed societies.
Show me why your regulation of culture is needed. Show me how it does good. And until you can show me both, keep your lawyers away.
I'm a lawyer. I make lawyers for a living.
All around us are the consequences of the most significant technological, and hence cultural, revolution in generations.
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.
All of the great Disney works took works that were in the public domain and remixed them.
While control is needed, and perfectly warranted, our bias should be clear up front: Monopolies are not justified by theory; they should be permitted only when justified by facts. If there is no solid basis for extending a certain monopoly protection, then we should not extend that protection.
We adopt this strategy now because there's an urgency to this debate. Over time, the space of free expression has shrunk.
When government disappears, it's not as if paradise will take its place. When governments are gone, other interests will take their place.
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.
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.