Words matter. These are the best Copyright Quotes from famous people such as Franklin Foer, Jon Johansen, Nathan Myhrvold, Douglas Carter Beane, Kate Greenaway, and they’re great for sharing with your friends.
In the epic war over Silicon Valley’s intellectual property, Bill Gates was on the side of licensing copyright and robust protections for intellectual property. He wasn’t on the side of the hackers, and he didn’t want information to be free.
All over the world copyright holders are trying to limit consumers’ rights. We cannot have that.
In the early days of the software industry, people cared about copyright and didn’t give a damn about patents – they copied each other willy-nilly.
If I’m seeing you, you’re going to influence me. I’m sorry – I’m just that way. I’m a big sponge. You can’t copyright an aesthetic.
I have made it a rule for a long time, not to part with the copyright of my drawings, for I have been so copied, my drawings reproduced and sold for advertisements and done in ways I hate.
The marketplace can handle this. The laws are there. The courts have shown a consistent ability to find a balance between copyright owners and copyright users.
My father never violated any copyright laws. He created cover versions, that is, he got new singers to sing popular Hindi songs to build his music empire. This was permitted under the law and he did not do anything illegal.
The most important thing about intellectual property vs. creative expression is that copyright law was created not to stifle creativity but to encourage creativity.
If you don’t move to protect copyright, if you don’t move to protect our children, it’s not going to sit well.
The U.S. obviously has all the evidence they need to prosecute bankers. They just need to search their own spy database and then there you go – 1,000 bankers in jail, a trillion dollars in fines. But it doesn’t happen. Instead, the spy network is being used to fight a copyright case. They used Prism to spy on me.
The Supreme Court has crafted doctrines such as ‘fair use,’ which permits copying materials for criticism, parody, and transformative uses, and has ruled that abstract ideas are not subject to copyright, because courts will not punish people for merely using an abstract concept in speech.
When I saw that Google bought YouTube for $1.65 billion, I was dumbfounded! Why would Google get into bed with thieves? They’ve built a huge audience on the backs of copyright holders – and then they say I have to monitor them?
Napster’s only alleged liability is for contributory or vicarious infringement. So when Napster’s users engage in noncommercial sharing of music, is that activity copyright infringement? No.
Certainly the interest in asserting copyright is a justified one.
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.
In practice, the copyright system does a bad job of supporting authors, aside from the most popular ones. Other authors’ principal interest is to be better known, so sharing their work benefits them as well as readers.
All content should be copied without restriction. But for education and research, copyright laws are especially damaging.
I think that the use of copyright is going to change dramatically. Part of it is economics. There is just going to be so much content out there – there’s a scarcity of attention. Information consumes attention, and there’s too much information.
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.
Copyright promotes artistic creativity and the free circulation of ideas.
Traditional copyright has been that you can’t make a full copy of somebody’s work without their permission.
People have a copyright on their own life.
The copyright bargain: a balance between protection for the artist and rights for the consumer.
I’m not a big believer in our copyright laws; I find them way too restrictive.
The terms of copyright last far too long: either the life of the author plus 70 years after death for a personal work or 95 years for a corporate work. That length doesn’t encourage more authorship – it merely limits the speakers who could share powerful speeches, books, and films.
Actually, attorneys say, copying a purchased CD for even one friend violates the federal copyright code most of the time.
How much greater would their contributions to the U.S. economy be if U.S. copyright owners could access foreign markets otherwise dominated by pirate product?
The idea of copyright did not exist in ancient times, when authors frequently copied other authors at length in works of non-fiction. This practice was useful, and is the only way many authors’ works have survived even in part.
The Internet’s distinct configuration may have facilitated anonymous threats, copyright infringement, and cyberattacks, but it has also kindled the flame of freedom in ways that the framers of the American constitution would appreciate – the Federalist papers were famously authored pseudonymously.
The problem with copyright is it only protects that literal work. It doesn’t protect the design and the ideas. That’s unfortunate.
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.
I spend all my time right now trying to combat music retail and copyright.
I am explicitly not opening the giant can of worms that is the ongoing current discussion of patent, copyright, and trademark reform.
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.
I think copyright is moral, proper. I think a creator has the right to control the disposition of his or her works – I actually believe that the financial issue is less important than the integrity of the work, the attribution, that kind of stuff.
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.
No one under international copyright law has the right to depict me or my husband without our consent. I have been surprised by the many people, particularly Americans, who are either writing books or going to produce films about the Mandela family without even bothering to consult us.
The Digital Millennium Copyright Act indemnifies Internet Service Providers (ISP) such as Harvard from copyright abuses committed over their computer networks.
A brainy person does not abuse copyright; instead they respect it and uphold it.
Unfortunately, nothing is ever that simple in copyright law, and when it comes to music copyright, it’s especially convoluted.
But here’s the thing: what you do as a screenwriter is you sell your copyright. As a novelist, as a poet, as a playwright, you maintain your copyright.
I own all the characters I created, thanks to the Writers Guild, so nobody can do anything without me. The way it works is: If the copyright owners instigate a project, like the movie, then I get a fee as creator. If I instigate a project, like the musical, I pay a percentage to the copyright owners.
Music copyright and licensing laws haven’t kept up with technology or the times. The Music Modernization Act fixes that with a comprehensive set of reforms that will help musicians receive royalties they are owed while ensuring the public has access to that music.
It’s hard to see how the Copyright Office can rise to the many challenges of the 21st-century work that you do without dramatically more independence and dramatically more flexibility.
I’m a bit cynical that it ever will be addressed properly. I think it is healthy to get some sort of copyright protection. But some of it has gone on forever.
If you don’t move to protect copyright, if you don’t move to protect our children, it’s not going to sit well.
I think copyright is moral, proper. I think a creator has the right to control the disposition of his or her works – I actually believe that the financial issue is less important than the integrity of the work, the attribution, that kind of stuff.
From what I understand about Shakespeare – which isn’t a lot – there was no copyright law when he was writing. He sampled at will, and it wasn’t seen as a bad thing.
It’s not like what I do or what I wear is my copyright. What I’m wearing now also is an inspiration. It is how I saw it on the mannequin, and I just wore it, so it’s in a way copied. But obviously, I wouldn’t want to spend my life thinking about dresses. It is such a waste of life.
The idea of copyright did not exist in ancient times, when authors frequently copied other authors at length in works of non-fiction. This practice was useful, and is the only way many authors’ works have survived even in part.
Making movies is a very different experience in a lot of ways. It’s difficult when you’re used to owning the copyright and having a landlord’s possessory rights – I rent my plays to the companies that do them and, if I’m upset, I can pull the play. But the only two directors I’ve worked with are pretty great.
