Lawrence Lessig Law Quotations

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.

Copyright law has got to give up its obsession with 'the copy.' The law should not regulate 'copies' or 'modern reproductions' on their own. It should instead regulate uses--like public distributions of copies of copyrighted work--that connect directly to the economic incentive copyright law was intended to foster.

Overregulation corrupts citizens and weakens the rule of law.

Why should it be that just when technology is most encouraging of creativity, the law should be most restrictive?

Lawyers rarely test their power, or the power they promote, against this simple pragmatic question: "Will it do good?" When challenged about the expanding reach of the law, the lawyer answers, "Why not?

Code plus law is combining to reduce rights consumers used to have.

We established a regime that left creativity unregulated. Now it was unregulated because copyright law only covered "printing." Copyright law did not control derivative work. And copyright law granted this protection for the limited time of 14 years.

Law and technology produce, together, a kind of regulation of creativity we've not seen before.

Some blame the drug companies. I don't. They are corporations. Their managers are ordered by law to make money for the corporation. They push a certain patent policy not because of ideals,but because it is the policy that makes them the most money. And it only makes them the most money because of a certain corruption within our political system-a corruption the drug companies are certainly not responsible for. The corruption is our own politicians' failure of integrity.

If the law imposed the death penalty for parking tickets, we'd not only have fewer parking tickets, we'd also have much less driving.

I think the reality is that copyright law has for a very long time been a tiny little part of American jurisprudence, far removed from traditional First Amendment jurisprudence, and that made sense before the Internet. Now there is an unavoidable link between First Amendment interests and the scope of copyright law. The legal system is recognizing for the first time the extraordinary expanse of copyright regulation and its regulation of ordinary free-speech activities.