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.

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.

All software sucks.

Defect-free software does not exist.

Software development is technical activity conducted by human beings.

Digital art software has empowered both the painterly side of photographers, and the photographer side of painters.

Red Carpet Enterprise has been really well received since one guy can install it in about an hour, and it makes it trivial to deal with software management issues like deploying updates and creating standard package sets for your various machines.

Adding manpower to a late software project makes it later.

As every new breed of virus is conceived, created and released into the wild, another small change is made to the anti-virus software to combat the new threat.

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.

Twenty-five years ago, the notion was you could create a general problem-solver software that could solve problems in many different domains. That just turned out to be totally wrong.

Diaspora starts about a thousand years from now. Most of human civilisation has moved inside computers; essentially, a major branch of our descendants consists of conscious software.

We also had good software in the key categories and more focus on the gameplaying capability, so more of the marketing effort was targeted at game customers.

None of our competitors have ever made two systems that run the same software.

I want people to use Perl. I want to be a positive ingredient of the world and make my American history. So, whatever it takes to give away my software and get it used, that's great.

When it comes to software, I much prefer free software, because I have very seldom seen a program that has worked well enough for my needs, and having sources available can be a life-saver.

However, writing software without defects is not sufficient. In my experience, it is at least as difficult to write software that is safe - that is, software that behaves reasonably under adverse conditions.

Since when has the world of computer software design been about what people want? This is a simple question of evolution. The day is quickly coming when every knee will bow down to a silicon fist, and you will all beg your binary gods for mercy.

I think it is important for software to avoiding imposing a cognitive style on workers and their work.

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.