Now that copyrights can be just about a century long, the inability to know what is protected and what is not protected becomes a huge and obvious burden on the creative process.

So uncritically do we accept the idea of property in ideas that we don't even notice how monstrous it is to deny ideas to a people who are dying without them.

Some blame the drug companies. I don't. They are corporations. Their managers are ordered by law to make money for the corporation. They push a certain patent policy not because of ideals,but because it is the policy that makes them the most money. And it only makes them the most money because of a certain corruption within our political system-a corruption the drug companies are certainly not responsible for. The corruption is our own politicians' failure of integrity.

Monopoly controls have been the exception in free societies; they have been the rule in closed societies.

Politics is that rare sport where the amateur contest is actually more interesting than the professional.

Here's what we [Americans] need: a 30 second you tube video of some guy at a party constantly checking out everyone else at the party, while he pretends to be speaking to the other person. We're the other person. The guy are the politicians. And the distraction is the corruption: We need a Congress that can afford to talk to us. For at least one drink or so.

I think the reality is that copyright law has for a very long time been a tiny little part of American jurisprudence, far removed from traditional First Amendment jurisprudence, and that made sense before the Internet. Now there is an unavoidable link between First Amendment interests and the scope of copyright law. The legal system is recognizing for the first time the extraordinary expanse of copyright regulation and its regulation of ordinary free-speech activities.