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

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

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.

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.

While the creative works from the 16th century can still be accessed and used by others, the data in some software programs from the 1990s is already inaccessible.

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 get in the way of this ideology.

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.

Americans have been selling this view around the world: that progress comes from perfect protection of intellectual property.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

A free culture has been our past, but it will only be our future if we change the path we are on right now.

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.

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.

All around us are the consequences of the most significant technological, and hence cultural, revolution in generations.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

Monopoly controls have been the exception in free societies; they have been the rule in closed societies.

A free culture is not a culture without property; it is not a culture in which artists don't get paid.

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

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.

Technology means you can now do amazing things easily; but you couldn't easily do them legally.

In almost every country there are elements of opinion which would welcome such a conclusion because they wish to return to the politics of the balance of power, unrestricted and unregulated armaments, international anarchy, and preparation for war.

It would be immoral to walk away from the consequences of our actions, leaving behind anarchy and civil war in Iraq.

Are not laws dangerous which inhibit the passions? Compare the centuries of anarchy with those of the strongest legalism in any country you like and you will see that it is only when the laws are silent that the greatest actions appear.

If we don't make earnest moves toward real solutions, then each day we move one day closer to revolution and anarchy in this country. This is the sad, and yet potentially joyous, state of America.

Tyranny and anarchy are never far apart.

Overall, the anarchy was the most creative of all periods of Japanese culture for in it there appeared the greatest landscape painting, the culmination of the skill of landscape gardening and the arts of flower arrangement, and the No drama.

Without an advocate for the poor, without a new state of mind in America, the country lies on the brink of anarchy.

In liberal democracy and anxious anarchy, the traditional classic dance, compact of aristocratic authority and absolute freedom in a necessity of order, has never been so promising as an independent expression as it is today.

Inside every working anarchy, there's an Old Boy Network.

Anarchy is the only slight glimmer of hope.

There is no chance and anarchy in the universe. All is system and gradation. Every god is there sitting in his sphere.

The human race is intoxicated with narrow victories, for life is a string of them like pearls that hit the floor when the rope breaks, and roll away in perfection and anarchy.

As soon as liberty is complete it dies in anarchy.

Our government... teaches the whole people by its example. If the government becomes the lawbreaker, it breeds contempt for law; it invites every man to become a law unto himself; it invites anarchy.

I was the only guy with any bit of anarchy left.

There is no greater evil than anarchy.

Undermine their pompous authority, reject their moral standards, make anarchy and disorder your trademarks. Cause as much chaos and disruption as possible but don't let them take you ALIVE.

The Internet is the first thing that humanity has built that humanity doesn't understand, the largest experiment in anarchy that we have ever had.