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

A free culture is not a culture without property; it is not a culture in which artists don't get paid. A culture without property, or in which creators can't get paid, is anarchy, not freedom. Anarchy is not what I advance here. Instead, the free culture that I defend in this book is a balance between anarchy and control.

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.

Some may not like the Constitution's requirements, but that doesn't make the Constitution a pirate's charter.

I'm focused on solving the problem that would make it plausible for gov't to get back to solving real problems.

While the creative works from the 16th century can still be accessed and used by others, the data in some software programs from the 1990s is already inaccessible. Once a company that produces a certain product goes out of business, it has no simple way to uncover how its product encoded data. The code is thus lost, and the software is inaccessible. Knowledge has been destroyed.

Before the monopoly should be permitted, there must be reason to believe it will do some good - for society, and not just for monopoly holders.