Creativity and innovation always builds on the past. The past always tries to control the creativity that builds upon it. Free societies enable the future by limiting this power of the past. Ours is less and less a free society.

I think if the copyright regime focuses on the people we are supposed to be helping, the artists and creators, and builds a system that gives them the freedom to choose and to protect and to be rewarded for their creativity, then we will have the right focus.

One great feature of modern society is the institutionalized respect we give to processes designed to destroy the past.

Creativity builds upon the public domain. The battle that we're fighting now is about whether the public domain will continue to be fed by creative works after their copyright expires. That has been our tradition but that tradition has been perverted in the last generation. We're trying to use the Constitution to reestablish what has always been taken for granted--that the public domain would grow each year with new creative work.

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

We are on the cusp of this time where I can say, "I speak as a citizen of the world" without others saying, "God, what a nut."

Americans have been selling this view around the world: that progress comes from perfect protection of intellectual property.