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10.8.05

Thomas Jefferson, Letter To Isaac McPherson Monticello, August 13, 1813

"If nature has made any one thing less susceptible than all others of exclusive property, it is the action of the thinking power called an idea, which an individual may exclusively possess as long as he keeps it to himself; but the moment it is divulged, it forces itself into the possession of everyone, and the receiver cannot dispossess himself of it. Its peculiar character, too, is that no one possesses the less, because every other possesses the whole of it. He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me.

That ideas should freely spread from one to another over the globe, for the moral and mutual instruction of man, and improvement of his condition, seems to have been peculiarly and benevolently designed by nature, when she made them, like fire, expansible over all space, without lessening their density at any point, and like the air in which we breathe, move, and have our physical being, incapable of confinement or exclusive appropriation.

Inventions then cannot, in nature, be a subject of property."

Free Books on Creative Freedom

Free Culture: How Big Media Uses Technology and the Law to Lock Down Culture and Control Creativity. "Lawrence Lessig could be called a cultural environmentalist. One of America’s most original and influential public intellectuals, his focus is the social dimension of creativity: how creative work builds on the past and how society encourages or inhibits that building with laws and technologies. In his two previous books, CODE and THE FUTURE OF IDEAS, Lessig concentrated on the destruction of much of the original promise of the Internet. Now, in FREE CULTURE, he widens his focus to consider the diminishment of the larger public domain of ideas. In this powerful wake-up call he shows how short-sighted interests blind to the long-term damage they’re inflicting are poisoning the ecosystem that fosters innovation."

Author Kembrew McLeod Trademarked the Phrase "Freedom of Expression" to illustrate how excessive application of intellectual property rights has resulted in the theft of human culture. His book Freedom of Expression®: Overzealous Copyright Bozos and Other Enemies of Creativity explores the ramifications of allowing culture to be increasingly fenced off and made proprietary.



More great Quotes on Intellectual Property Issues

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