“Overprotecting intellectual property is as harmful as underprotecting it. Creativity is impossible without a rich public domain. Nothing today, likely nothing since we tamed fire, is genuinely new: Culture, like science and technology, grows by accretion, each new creator building on the works of those who came before. Overprotection stifles the very creative forces it's supposed to nurture.”

Dissenting in the White v. Samsung Elec. Am., Inc., 989 F.2d 1512 (9th Cir. 1993) ruling. http://notabug.com/kozinski/whitedissent.

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "Overprotecting intellectual property is as harmful as underprotecting it. Creativity is impossible without a rich publi…" by Alex Kozinski?
Alex Kozinski photo
Alex Kozinski 8
American judge 1950

Related quotes

Akio Morita photo
Audre Lorde photo

“The art of the creative leader is the art of institution building, the reworking of human and technological materials to fashion an organism that embodies new and enduring values.”

Philip Selznick (1919–2010) American sociologist

Source: Leadership in Administration: A Sociological Interpretation, 1957, p. 152-3

Jerome Isaac Friedman photo
Lawrence Lessig photo

“Overregulation stifles creativity. It smothers innovation. It gives dinosaurs a veto over the future. It wastes the extraordinary opportunity for a democratic creativity that digital technology enables.”

Free Culture (2004)
Context: Overregulation stifles creativity. It smothers innovation. It gives dinosaurs a veto over the future. It wastes the extraordinary opportunity for a democratic creativity that digital technology enables.
In addition to these important harms, there is one more that was important to our forebears, but seems forgotten today. Overregulation corrupts citizens and weakens the rule of law.
The war that is being waged today is a war of prohibition. As with every war of prohibition, it is targeted against the behavior of a very large number of citizens. According to The New York Times, 43 million Americans downloaded music in May 2002. According to the RIAA, the behavior of those 43 million Americans is a felony. We thus have a set of rules that transform 20 percent of America into criminals.

Wisława Szymborska photo
Naomi Klein photo
Steve Ballmer photo

“Linux is not in the public domain. Linux is a cancer that attaches itself in an intellectual property sense to everything it touches. That's the way that the license works.”

Steve Ballmer (1956) American businessman who was the chief executive officer of Microsoft

" Microsoft CEO takes launch break with the Sun-Times https://web.archive.org/web/20011108013601/http://www.suntimes.com/output/tech/cst-fin-micro01.html" (1 June 2001) Chicago Sun Times
2000s

Paul Sloane photo

“People confuse creativity and innovation. But it is very simple. Creativity is about conceiving new ideas. Innovation is about implementing them.”

Paul Sloane (1950) British author and puzzle designer

Quoted in "Paul Sloane Talks about Strategies for Creating Effective Innovation Processes" https://innovationmanagement.se/imtool-articles/paul-sloane-talks-about-strategies-for-creating-effective-innovation-processes/, InnovationManagement.se (2 May 2019)

Related topics