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

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.

Young actors often don't think of the consequences of doing nudity or sex scenes. They want the role so badly that they agree to be exploited, and then end up embarrassing family, friends, and even strangers.

All that a good government aims at... is to add no unnecessary and artificial aid to the force of its own unavoidable consequences, and to abstain from fortifying and accumulating social inequality as a means of increasing political inequalities.

We have made mistakes. In our haste to do all things for all people, we did not foresee the full consequences of our actions. And when the people raised their voices, we didn't hear. But our deafness was only a temporary condition, and not an irreversible condition.

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

Any intelligent woman who reads the marriage contract, and then goes into it, deserves all the consequences.

I just love having a buzz all the time, regardless of the consequences.

Truth, like the juice of the poppy, in small quantities, calms men; in larger, heats and irritates them, and is attended by fatal consequences in excess.

Customs form us all, our thoughts, our morals, our most fixed beliefs; are consequences of our place of birth.

In arriving at a decision in a question of doubt, the apostles in the Acts were guided solely by their sense of the Spirit behind the action, not by any speculations as to consequences which might ensue. And so they found the truth.

Resistance is feasible even for those who are not heroes by nature, and it is an obligation, I believe, for those who fear the consequences and detest the reality of the attempt to impose American hegemony.

I used to be a good party boy. I'm old. I'm an old man. You pay the consequences. I'm just fine with a couple of drinks, no more than that.

The position I took at the time was that we hadn't really examined any of the potential environmental consequences of introducing genetically modified organisms.

I mean that the function of the police is to solve problems that have law-enforcement consequences in a way that is based on a genuine partnership with the neighborhood in both the venting of the problem and the discussion of the solution.

Every person has free choice. Free to obey or disobey the Natural Laws. Your choice determines the consequences. Nobody ever did, or ever will, escape the consequences of his choices.

I am not a politician... I only suffer the consequences.

What we can do is to explain as clearly as possible what the benefits would be of him going down one path, and what the potential consequences would be if he chooses another path.

The tragedy of September 11th was so sudden, so enormous, and so horrendous, both in terms of lives lost and global consequences, that this country and the world went into immediate and prolonged shock.

But men never violate the laws of God without suffering the consequences, sooner or later.