Eben Moglen

“ But we can only do so if human beings' equal right to communicate is not merely a promise against government intervention in the 18th century English speaking style, "Congress shall make no law abridging freedom of the press." ”

“ We have the hardware, and the software. Here, however, we do not have the legal infrastructure, yet, because the lawyers are still busy pursuing the belief that the producers should be captive to the distributors in order to encourage more production.
This, in truth, is the real interface between the law of international work and the law of international information.
The belief that you get more by enslaving - or merely salarying - the producer, and appropriating what is left over by way of social value as a thing called profit, has a long, dirty, disgraceful history. ”

“ The producers didn't benefit. Most musicians in the world drive taxicabs, sweep floors. Most poets wait on tables.
Because, when you have an oligopoly of distribution, they reduce output to raise price.
The great welfare loss of the twentieth century was the creators deprived of the opportunity to create, by the oligopolistic need to reduce output to raise price.
Is there anyone who disagrees with me that the twenty first century will see no such thing as the unpublished poet? Every poet has a way to reach the web. ”

“ Everywhere in the world where there are two copper wires connected to a telephone network, you can get, for nothing, not just the function of free switching, but all the knowledge necessary to do anything that computers can be made to do, and you can get it at no cost in a form that you can understand. ”

“ Free software, free hardware, free culture, and free spectrum.
And we are getting them, all. Bit, by bit, by bit.
Free software is the beginning of this story, because the system of distribution in the twenty first century economy - the system of distribution that makes the revolution happen - is a revolution in digital transportation.
We live in world now that consists of pipes and switches. ”

“ That's a revolutionary question and it has a simple answer, as revolutionary questions do: There is no consistency between the guarantee of fundamental human rights and a system of ownership of ideas.
So those of us who know the answer to the question are beginning to implement the necessary step. We are making it impossible to continue with the system of the ownership of ideas. We will be finished with that work within our lifetimes, and the system of ownership of ideas will have been relegated to that very important, but almost forgotten location, the dust heap of history. ”

“ But we don't have to worry just at the moment about the stones, the silver, the bananas and the dirt. Let us worry for the moment just about the bits, the things of use and beauty that everyone may have without excluding everyone else. ”

“ We are very fortunate generations, standing here on the shoulders of giants. People have been fighting for freedom of thought in the Western world for a thousand years, and we're very grateful to them, because they kept it alive in very dirty times. ”

“ Free hardware is the process of taking that free software and ensuring that the network within which it exists remains under the control of the people who own and use the hardware itself.
This seems very simple.
But it is not very simple because hardware is now the ground of contestation of the counterrevolution. The distributors of everything, those people who are sorry to hear that their expiration date on their legal regime has arrived, have a proposal. ”

“ We are learning that there is a connection between the fundamental human rights and the re-appropriation of what belongs to us, that was taken from us, by people who turned knowledge into commodities. ”

“ Lord Macaulay, writing about the English Glorious Revolution of 1688, from his position in the middle of the 19th century, found himself with a question: Here were all the great politicians of Whig England, having successfully dislodged a bitterly and evilly disposed despot, aware of enormous numbers of legal reforms that needed to be made, busy reshaping the English constitution in the winter of 1688-89. ”

“ You understand that they make and learn only from their own proprietary culture. They are like the man that Will Rogers made fun of when he said that he only knew what he read in the newspapers and he only read what he wrote himself. ”

“ The twentieth century saw damn near no such thing as the published poet, because publishers didn't make any money from poetry, and poets swept floors. That was the triumph of the intellectual property system's support for incentives for producers. ”

“ If you attempt to take a picture of what is on the screen, the screen should turn itself off. If you attempt to use an ordinary hard drive to store forbidden bits, the hard drive should refuse to work. ”

“ At the end of the 20th century, a local example of this problem, Silvio Berlusconi, discovered that you could recombine the two forms of previous discussion into one, known as "media takes state, state becomes media, fwertz Italia!" Very good: It is always helpful when the fellow on the other side does your work for you. ”