Sandra Day O'Connor Quotes

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.

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

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.

We have a massive system to regulate creativity. A massive system of lawyers regulating creativity as copyright law has expanded in unrecognizable forms, going from a regulation of publishing to a regulation of copying.

We protect monopolies with copyright.

It seems like every few years a big name author will holler something about how evil, heinous, and morally wrong fan fiction and fan fiction writers are, and then the Internet gets all upset and shocked, and then the author is shocked that people could get so upset.

All intellectual property rights are just licenses granted by society because it was thought, rightly or wrongly, that society as a whole would benefit by granting them. But in any particular situation, we have to ask: are we really better off granting such license? What kind of act are we licensing a person to do?

Since [some] American publishers pay nothing to the English authors whose stories they appropriate and publish, other American publishers can not to afford to pay American authors for writing stories.

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

Copyright and Trademark are completely different things. Copyright prevents anyone from copying this article and posting it somewhere else. Copyright happens instantaneously the moment I write something down that is unique and from my brain. Trademarks are far more restrictive.

Why don't people just open... my works instead of accusing me?

The problem with copyright is it only protects that literal work. It doesn't protect the design and the ideas. That's unfortunate.

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.'

Take away from English authors their copyrights, and you would very soon take away from England her authors.

You don't think we have a copyright to forgiveness, it is done by people everywhere.

If you steal from one author it's plagiarism; if you steal from many it's research.

When a thing has been said and well, have no scruple. Take it and copy it.

I write my own quotes. Except this one. I obviously stole this from somebody really clever.

That's the problem today: Who is the creator?

All good things which exist are the fruits of originality.

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.

I don't believe in the ownership of work.

Authors do this for a living, and if you take their work for nothing, you are depriving them of a living.

In our day the conventional element in literature is elaborately disguised by a law of copyright pretending that every work of art is an invention distinctive enough to be patented.

This song is Copyrighted in U.S., under Seal of Copyright #154085, for a period of 28 years, and anybody caught singin' it without our permission, will be mighty good friends of ourn, cause we don't give a dern. Publish it. Write it. Sing it. Swing to it. Yodel it. We wrote it, that's all we wanted to do