Willam Belli Quotes

For better or worse, we are the Court of Appeals for the Hollywood Circuit. Millions of people toil in the shadow of the law we make, and much of their livelihood is made possible by the existence of intellectual property rights. But much of their livelihood - and much of the vibrancy of our culture - also depends on the existence of other intangible rights: The right to draw ideas from a rich and varied public domain, and the right to mock, for profit as well as fun, the cultural icons of our time.

We have a massive system to regulate creativity. A massive system of lawyers regulating creativity as copyright law has expanded in unrecognizable forms, going from a regulation of publishing to a regulation of copying.

In today's world, it never looks good when you're suing somebody who earned $20,000 for writing a book over a period of a year or two.

It's my mission to sue the MPAA and take them down. I don't know how to go about doing that. But to me, it seems like it's something that has to be taken care of.

It is a pet peeve of mine when people throw around arguments citing 'Fair Use' and yet fail to actually explain what a fair use argument actually is.

We live in a world with "free" content, and this freedom is not an imperfection. We listen to the radio without paying for the songs we hear; we hear friends humming tunes that they have not licensed. We tell jokes that reference movie plots without the permission of the directors. We read our children books, borrowed from a library, without paying the original copyright holder for the performance rights.

With the copyright now extended to the life of the creator plus 100 years, for the first time in history no person henceforth will ever be able to freely use any work created in his lifetime.

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.

The most important thing about intellectual property vs. creative expression is that copyright law was created not to stifle creativity but to encourage creativity.

I believe in copyright, within limited precincts. But I also believe in fair use, public domain, and especially transformation.

Can you sue yourself for plagiarism? If so, then 'Old School' has presented Ivan Reitman with a case.

We need to create technologies - and a culture of respect, and an updated legal doctrine, too - that allow creative folks to make money from their own efforts.

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.

Providing free access to research papers on websites like Sci-Hub breaks so-called copyright law that was made to taboo free distribution of information on the Internet. That includes music, movies, documentaries, books, and research articles. Not everyone agrees that copyright law should exist in the first place.

Unfortunately, nothing is ever that simple in copyright law, and when it comes to music copyright, it's especially convoluted.

It is crazy how people can't understand the concept of comedy and music. It's like they have to be mutually exclusive.

Comedy shouldn't be restrained under the belt of normality.

The nice thing about gag manga is how it has this aspect where, at the very least, you're permitted to come out with anything. In my case, anything can talk. Like the mountains.

The great thing about writing 'Deadpool' is that he can demolish expectations and typical comic book conventions with monster truck force. There are few other characters who can transition so easily from one type of story to the next.

The fights that I had with DC and Marvel, I won. And guess what? They profited by it.

I recognise that the whole issue of downloading and intellectual property rights is not an easy one, but on the whole, I'm a fan of downloading, both legal and illegal, and the open-source ethos that it harbours for the future is a good one.

I'm in Alkaline Trio; I guess I get to rip off myself. I give myself permission.

When it comes to music, movies, literature, paintings, and even Bikram yoga, it's pretty easy to have an opinion about whether something has been copied. Software, on the other hand, was an awkward late addition to the original Copyright Act of 1976, shoehorned into section 102(a) as a 'literary work.'

Even though I am sympathetic to newspapers, I am not entirely convinced by the newspapers' claim that Google News violates fair use standards in posting snippets from news articles on its site.

We filed suit against YouTube before the Google purchase. At the time I went after YouTube, I thought it was a small company ripping off our copyrights.