Woody Guthrie Quotes

Of all the creative work produced by humans anywhere, a tiny fraction has continuing commercial value. For that tiny fraction, the copyright is a crucially important legal device.

'Freeing' a literary work into the public domain is less a public benefit than a transfer of wealth from the families of American writers to the executives and stockholders of various businesses who will continue to profit from, for example, 'The Garden Party,' while the descendants of Katherine Mansfield will not.

That free culture was carried to America; that was our birth — 1790. We established a regime that left creativity unregulated. Now it was unregulated because copyright law only covered "printing." Copyright law did not control derivative work. And copyright law granted this protection for the limited time of 14 years.

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.

There is no sense in owning the copyright unless you are going to use it. I don't think anyone wants to hold all of this stuff in a vault and not let anybody have it. It's only worth something once it's popular.

I got the copyright for love!

The copyright bargain: a balance between protection for the artist and rights for the consumer.

If I would use anything from 'The Little Prince,' even some little quote, it's all copyrighted in France. Like Walt Disney in this country, it's a national treasure.

An act to vest authors with their copies, for the times therein mentioned.

Copyright is too valuable to be wholly renounced.

We would reduce copyright terms to a more sensible term of 10 years.

What we are fighting for is the intent of copyright as it is described in the US constitution: the promotion of culture.

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

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

The real harm of term extension comes not from these famous works. The real harm is to the works that are not famous, not commercially exploited, and no longer available as a result.

Only one thing is impossible for God: To find any sense in any copyright law on the planet.

If we're talking about someone creating something new, those rights are fairly well defined (in the United States, at least) under existing copyright law. But then there's often discussion about the rights of people who produce works under work-for-hire arrangements, which can be far more subtle and nuanced.

By the time Apple's Macintosh operating system finally falls into the public domain, there will be no machine that could possibly run it. The term of copyright for software is effectively unlimited.

As we've seen, our constitutional system requires limits on copyright as a way to assure that copyright holders do not too heavily influence the development and distribution of our culture.

Certainly the interest in asserting copyright is a justified one.

I'm not a big believer in our copyright laws; I find them way too restrictive.

The Constitution wanted artists to have control over their works because they knew it would create incentive to create more works. That is clearly still the goal.

But here's the thing: what you do as a screenwriter is you sell your copyright. As a novelist, as a poet, as a playwright, you maintain your copyright.

Traditional copyright has been that you can't make a full copy of somebody's work without their permission.