Quotes on Copyright

The problem with copyright enforcement is that when the parameters aren't incredibly well defined, it means big corporations, who have deeper pockets and better lawyers, can bully people.

One of the convenient things about literature is that, despite copyrights [...] a book belongs to the reader as well as to the writer.

Only one thing is impossible for God: To find any sense in any copyright law on the planet.

The war against illegal file-sharing is like the church's age-old war against masturbation. It's a war you just can't win.

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.

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.

The priceless heritage of our society is the unrestricted constitutional right of each member to think as he will. Thought control is a copyright of totalitarianism, and we have no claim to it.