Edward Felten Quotes

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

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.

The marketplace can handle this. The laws are there. The courts have shown a consistent ability to find a balance between copyright owners and copyright users.

I'm a bit cynical that it ever will be addressed properly. I think it is healthy to get some sort of copyright protection. But some of it has gone on forever.

The rights of copyright holders need to be protected, but some draconian remedies that have been suggested would create more problems than they would solve.

All over the world copyright holders are trying to limit consumers' rights. We cannot have that.

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.

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

It's hard to see how the Copyright Office can rise to the many challenges of the 21st-century work that you do without dramatically more independence and dramatically more flexibility.

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.

Vigorous enforcement of copyrights themselves is an important part of the picture. But I don't think that expanding the legal definition of copyright outside of actual copyright infringement is the right move.

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

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

Put simply, the doctrine of 'Fair Use' applies to content republished from copyrightable material and how much of that content is, literally, fair to use.

In making policy designed with copyright in mind, you end up making decisions about whether other important technologies, such as privacy-enhancing or file-search technologies, should be encouraged or discouraged. A collision is happening between creativity and protecting IP.

If you don't move to protect copyright, if you don't move to protect our children, it's not going to sit well.

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.

I think that the use of copyright is going to change dramatically. Part of it is economics. There is just going to be so much content out there - there's a scarcity of attention. Information consumes attention, and there's too much information.

I was an online service provider. It's not my job to police what people are uploading. It's the job of the content owners, and the law is very clear. If you create content, and you want to protect your copyrights, you have to do the work.

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

I think copyright has its right to exist, absolutely, and I think that it's up to copyright creators to come up with new solutions that deal with the reality of the world we're living in today.

If the only way a library can offer an Internet exhibit about the New Deal is to hire a lawyer to clear the rights to every image and sound, then the copyright system is burdening creativity in a way that has never been seen before

If the contest for an international copyright is to be managed like the annual pig-iron conflict, or the wool fight, ending in a compromise by which every interest gets a certain amount of protection at the expense of the public, it will certainly be of little service either to England, America, or humanity at large. What is needed is a legal protection for property in ideas; in other words, an authors' copyright.

… the pursuit of civil rights by copyright.

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.