Lawrence Lessig

[The Internet] affects democracy... As more and more citizens express what they think, and defend it in writing, that will change the way people understand public issues. It is easy to be wrong and misguided in your head. It is harder when the product of your mind can be criticized by others. Of course, it is a rare human who admits that he has been persuaded that he is wrong. But it is even rarer for a human to ignore when he has been proven wrong. The writing of ideas, arguments, and criticism improves democracy.

Overregulation stifles creativity. It smothers innovation. It gives dinosaurs a veto over the future. It wastes the extraordinary opportunity for a democratic creativity that digital technology enables.

Overregulation corrupts citizens and weakens the rule of law.

"E assim, quando os geeks e os tecnólogos defendem as tecnologias dos novos Armstrongs ou irmãos Wright, muitos de nós nos tornamos simplesmente hostis. O bom senso não fica revoltado. Diferentemente como no caso dos coitados dos Causbys, o bom senso está do lado dos donos das propriedades nessa guerra. Diferentemente dos afortunados irmãos Wright, a Internet não inspirou uma revolução do nosso lado.
A minha esperança é trazer o bom senso de volta ao nosso lado. Estou cada vez mais impressionado com o poder de tal idéia de propriedade intelectual, e mais ainda, com seu poder para bloquear o pensamento crítico feito contra os poderosos. Jamais houve em nossa história um período em que tanto da nossa "cultura" tinha um "dono" como atualmente. E nunca antes houve um período aonde a concentração de poder para controlar os usos da cultura foi tão inquestionavelmente aceita como o é atualmente."

If “piracy means using the creative property of others without their permission- if “if value, then right” is true- then the history of the content industry is a history of piracy. Every important sector of “big media” today- film, records, radio, and cable TV-was born of a kind of piracy so defined. The consistent story is how last generation’s pirates join this generation’s country club-until now.

The aim of any literacy, and this literacy in particular, is to “empower people to choose the appropriate language for what they need to create or express.

In the 1970s, 3 percent of retiring members became lobbyists. Thirty years later, that number has increased by an order of magnitude. Between 1998 and 2004, more than 50 percent of senators and 42 percent of House members made that career transition.

"That tradition is the way our culture gets made. As I explain in the pages that follow, we come from a tradition of "free culture" — not "free" as in "free beer" (to borrow a phrase from the founder of the freesoftware movement[2] ), but "free" as in "free speech," "free markets," "free trade," "free enterprise," "free will," and "free elections." A free culture supports and protects creators and innovators. It does this directly by granting intellectual property rights. But it does so indirectly by limiting the reach of those rights, to guarantee that follow-on creators and innovators remain as free as possible from the control of the past. A free culture is not a culture without property, just as a free market is not a market in which everything is free. The opposite of a free culture is a "permission culture" — a culture in which creators get to create only with the permission of the powerful, or of creators from the past."

Liberty in cyberspace will not come from the absence of the state. Liberty there, as anywhere, will come from a state of a certain kind. We build a world where freedom can flourish not by removing from society any self-conscious control, but by setting it in a place where a particular kind of self-conscious control survives. We build liberty as our founders did, by setting society upon a certain constitution.

"As tecnologias digitais criam o ambiente propício para uma nova forma de bricolagem, ou "colagem livre", como Brown chama-a. Muitos podem adicionar ou transformar as criações de outros."

"As tecnologias digitais criam o ambiente propício para uma nova forma de bricolagem, ou "colagem livre", como Brown chama-a. Muitos podem adicionar ou transformar as criações de outros.
O melhor exemplo de larga escala desse tipo de criação até agora é o software livre ou software de código aberto (free software/open-source software FS/OSS). O FS/OSS é um tipo de software no qual o código fonte3 é compartilhado. Qualquer um pode obter uma cópia da tecnologia que permite que os programas FS/OSS funciona. E qualquer um que tenha interesse em aprender como uma certa tecnologia FS/OSS funciona pode brincar com o código.
Essa oportunidade cria uma "plataforma de aprendizado completamente nova", como descreve Brown. "Assim que você começa a trabalhar nela, você (...) libera uma colagem livre na comunidade, de forma que outras pessoas possam olhar no seu código, brincar com ele, testá-lo, verem o que podem fazer para o melhorar". Cada atividade dessas é uma forma de aprendizado. "O código aberto tornou-se uma plataforma importante de aprendizado"."

For the first time that evening, a small idea was uttered by the representative of this extraordinary company. Schmidt spoke of invigorating the Google PAC, and pushing harder to get their side of the issue better heard.
And I thought, Wow. This is a Google solution to this, the most important problem facing this republic? This the most they can imagine?

Cable TV was also born of a kind of piracy.

Code will be a central tool in this analysis. It will present the greatest threat to both liberal and libertarian ideals, as well as their greatest promise. We can build, or architect, or code cyberspace to protect values that we believe are fundamental. Or we can build, or architect, or code cyberspace to allow those values to disappear. There is no middle ground. There is no choice that does not include some kind of building. Code is never found; it is only ever made, and only ever made by us.

[I]t kind of terrified me to imagine myself spending the rest of my life tinkering on the margins of the small arguments.