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.

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.

I love my DSL, but I love my WiFi more. And I probably get on the Internet 40 percent to 50 percent more because of the combination of those technologies.

I was stuck at home in bed with me and got more and more involved with the Internet. I used it to keep in contact with friends and to make sure I was up to date with everything that was going on in the world.

There's a statistical theory that if you gave a million monkeys typewriters and set them to work, they'd eventually come up with the complete works of Shakespeare. Thanks to the Internet, we now know this isn't true.

Five or ten years ago, when it was clear the Internet was becoming a mainstream phenomenon, it was equally clear that a lot of people were being left out and could be left behind.

I got sick and tired of my lady wearing ugly underwear to bed, so I turned to the Internet.

At the bottom, the elimination of spyware and the preservation of privacy for the consumer are critical goals if the Internet is to remain safe and reliable and credible.

In my column series "The Main Thing," I often talk about how Internet technology can improve the way people communicate - both within a business and between a business and its customers and partners.

The Internet is not just one thing, it's a collection of things - of numerous communications networks that all speak the same digital language.

I don't know much about the internet, I'm afraid.

Congress will pass a law restricting public comment on the Internet to individuals who have spent a minimum of one hour actually accomplishing a specific task while on line.

The new information technology... Internet and e-mail... have practically eliminated the physical costs of communications.

Those involved in the program are interested in how to use photography, videos, the Internet, film, and anything related to communications and transmission of information in the most up-to-date modern ways.

There are some scary statistics out there: one in five kids aged 10-17 have received a sexual solicitation or approach via the Internet.

When I get back from this book tour, I'm planning to learn the internet. Maybe I can hook up in cyberspace.

You can browse to your heart's content but it's hard work and not easy on the feet unless you do it through catalogs or the Internet, and I like to touch and try on the things I buy.

I'm a babe in the woods when it comes to the Internet.

I read on the Internet that I was dead.

We are going after a targeted group of businesses that are creating opportunities for themselves using other people's property. The Internet has very little to do with this.