# Quote — Lawrence Lessig, Free Culture

> By insisting on the Constitution's limits to copyright, obviously Eldred was not endorsing piracy. Indeed, in an obvious sense, he was fighting a kind of piracy — piracy of the public domain. When Robert Frost wrote his work and when Walt Disney created Mickey Mouse, the maximum copyright term was just fifty-six years. Because of interim changes, Frost and Disney had already enjoyed a seventy-five-year monopoly for their work. They had gotten the benefit of the bargain that the Constitution envisions: In exchange for a monopoly protected for fifty-six years, they created new work. But now these entities were using their power — expressed through the power of lobbyists' money — to get another twenty-year dollop of monopoly. That twenty-year dollop would be taken from the public domain. Eric Eldred was fighting a piracy that affects us all.

- Author: [Lawrence Lessig](https://www.leafyquotes.com/lawrence-lessig.md)
- Book: [Free Culture](https://www.leafyquotes.com/lawrence-lessig/free-culture.md)
- Source: [Wikiquote](https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Lawrence_Lessig#Free_Culture_(2004)) ([CC BY-SA 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/))
- Quote page: https://www.leafyquotes.com/lawrence-lessig/free-culture/by-insisting-on-the

## More from this book

> We, the most powerful democracy in the world, have developed a strong norm against talking about politics. It's fine to talk about politics with people you agree with. But it is rude to argue about politics with people you disagree with. Political discourse becomes isolated, and isolated discourse becomes more extreme. We say what our friends want to hear, and hear very little beyond what our friends say.

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/lawrence-lessig/free-culture/we-the-most.md)

> The law should regulate in certain areas of culture — but it should regulate culture only where that regulation does good. Yet lawyers rarely test their power, or the power they promote, against this simple pragmatic question: "Will it do good?" When challenged about the expanding reach of the law, the lawyer answers, "Why not?"
>
> We should ask, "Why?" Show me why your regulation of culture is needed. Show me how it does good. And until you can show me both, keep your lawyers away.

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/lawrence-lessig/free-culture/the-law-should.md)

> When it has become silly to suppose that the role of our government should be to "seek balance," then count me with the silly, for that means that this has become quite serious indeed. If it should be obvious to everyone that the government does not seek balance, that the government is simply the tool of the most powerful lobbyists, that the idea of holding the government to a different standard is absurd, that the idea of demanding of the government that it speak truth and not lies is just naïve, then who have we, the most powerful democracy in the world, become?

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/lawrence-lessig/free-culture/when-it-has.md)