Tom Lehrer Quotes

There are people out there who don't see value in intellectual property, and so they're always going to have a problem if there are lawsuits involving intellectual property.

Creativity in copyright law only means that you didn’t copy it from someone else …. Most works that are protected under copyright are not creative in the colloquial sense of the word.

I firmly believe in copyrights and am put off by plagiarism.

I am outraged that the Gorillaz have infringed the copyright of my song 'Time Warp,' claiming their song 'Stylo' to be an original composition.

A free culture has been our past, but it will only be our future if we change the path we are on right now.

You cannot steal somebody's intellectual property. Law and justice protect.

If you create something, you don't want someone else to go and profit from it; you have your right to make a living and everything. So I respect copyright. What I don't respect is copyright extremism. And I what I don't respect is a business model that encourages piracy.

I steal from every movie ever made.

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 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.

A brainy person does not abuse copyright; instead they respect it and uphold it.

I understand the worries of many - not only here in this auditorium -, and some have already written to me to say that technical progress has lowered the threshold that stops people from helping themselves to protected works without the slightest embarrassment.

Copyright is too valuable to be wholly renounced.

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.

I wish I were getting a percentage of the sales, but I feel complimented actually because these people can steal anything from anybody. They haven’t paid for any of these pictures… They like my pictures so much that they continually steal them over and over again.

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

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.

I always say this, but I'm saying this again. Do not encourage piracy.

All content should be copied without restriction. But for education and research, copyright laws are especially damaging.

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.

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.'

I believe in copyright, but I don't believe in copyright extremism.

As long as copyright is breached in Iran and international works are being freely published in magazines and newspapers, no one feels any need for Iranian works.

Fair use is always going to be a gray area, and it should be. We need to allow for things we can't see yet.