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“In his bloggy rage after being taken to task by a mere non-lawyer, [Lawrence] Lessig demonstrates that he doesn’t really know or care what the public domain really is, apparently blinded by his grand wish that damn near everything be put there [...] Lessig doesn’t care much about protecting intellectual property, but he’s downright monomaniacal about the public domain.”
“”
“Anyone who is tied to physical objects as the only things with monetary value is flat-out unprepared for the Internet and should stay offline.”
“”
“[Lawrence] Lessig looks like the cashier whose line you want to avoid at Starbucks.”
“”
“I was shocked to discover a nest of pirates yesterday, operating brazenly right here in my hometown. They were gathered in a large nondescript building, reading and talking quietly and in some cases listening to music. Some kind of social club, perhaps? Yes, but with a profoundly subversive theme: “sharing” content. This establishment houses large collections of books, magazines, audiotapes, videotapes, CDs, DVDs. And it ‘shares’ these with its patrons. I watched in amazement as people left the building carrying armloads of these content assets, which they ‘borrow’ without paying a nickel to the copyright holders. It’s frightening, really. Who knew?”
“”
“Copyright Law is not a tool of repression granted to an unaccountable corporation by a corrupt congress at the expense of an ignorant public. It exists to protect and promote artists. Don’t ever forget that.”
“”
“But now we are facing a very new and a very troubling assault on our fiscal security, on our very economic life and we are facing it from a thing called the video cassette recorder and its necessary companion called the blank tape. And it is like a great tidal wave just off the shore. This video cassette recorder and the blank tape threaten profoundly the life-sustaining protection, I guess you would call it, on which copyright owners depend, on which film people depend, on which television people depend and it is called copyright.”
“”
“It’s theft. Your contract with the network when you get the show is you’re going to watch the spots. Otherwise you couldn’t get the show on an ad-supported basis. Any time you skip a commercial or watch the button you’re actually stealing the programming.”
“”
“Rightly or wrongly, the free and open software movements have gained a reputation for militant opposition to the very idea of intellectual property. The result is that our voice is deemed to be so loud that it cannot be heard over its own noise. We are in many respects ignored, when we have in fact useful things to say and might be heard if only we dropped some of the Maoist fervency.”
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“Intellectual property (IP) has been driving the species for some 5 million years. In the past 100 or so years, it’s increasingly been saddled with the chore of lining the pockets of middlemen and parasites who, sans this lining, would lack sufficient intellect to open a can of beer.”
