“At the moment, everyone gets a copyright as soon as the work is written down or otherwise fixed, whether they want one or not.”

“The precursor of copyright law served to force the identification of the author so that he could be punished if he proved to be a heretic or a revolutionary”

“Given an area of law that legislators were happy to hand over to the affected industries and a technology that was both unfamiliar and threatening, the prospects for legislative insight were poor. Lawmakers were assured by lobbyistsa) that this was business as usual, that no dramatic changes were being made by the Green or White papers; orb) that the technology presented a terrible menace to the American cultural industries, but that prompt and statesmanlike action would save the day; orc) that layers of new property rights, new private enforcers of those rights, and technological control and surveillance measures were all needed in order to benefit consumers, who would now be able to “purchase culture by the sip rather than by the glass” in a pervasively monitored digital environment.In practice, somewhat confusingly, these three arguments would often be combined. Legislators’ statements seemed to suggest that this was a routine Armageddon in which firm, decisive statesmanship was needed to preserve the digital status quo in a profoundly transformative and proconsumer way. Reading the congressional debates was likely to give one conceptual whiplash.To make things worse, the press was—in 1995, at least—clueless about these issues. It was not that the newspapers were ignoring the Internet. They were paying attention—obsessive attention in some cases. But as far as the mainstream press was concerned, the story line on the Internet was sex: pornography, online predation, more pornography. The lowbrow press stopped there. To be fair, the highbrow press was also interested in Internet legal issues (the regulation of pornography, the regulation of online predation) and constitutional questions (the First Amendment protection of Internet pornography). Reporters were also asking questions about the social effect of the network (including, among other things, the threats posed by pornography and online predators).”

“The history of patents includes a wealth of attempts to reward friends of the government and restrict or control dangerous technologies.”

“I was slightly brain damaged at birth, and I want people like me to see that they shouldn't let a disability get in the way. I want to raise awareness - I want to turn my disability into ability.”

“I do feel that literature should be demystified. What I object to is what is happening in our era: literature is only something you get at school as an assignment. No one reads for fun, or to be subversive or to get turned on to something. It's just like doing math at school. I mean, how often do we sit down and do trigonometry for fun, to relax. I've thought about this, the domination of the literary arts by theory over the past 25 years -- which I detest -- and it's as if you have to be a critic to mediate between the author and the reader and that's utter crap. Literature can be great in all ways, but it's just entertainment like rock'n'roll or a film. It is entertainment. If it doesn't capture you on that level, as entertainment, movement of plot, then it doesn't work. Nothing else will come out of it. The beauty of the language, the characterisation, the structure, all that's irrelevant if you're not getting the reader on that level -- moving a story. If that's friendly to readers, I cop to it.”

“The thought arrested her and she pulled away from him just to stand there a moment and take in the strangeness of it all. Music drifted down to her then, an odd tinkling sort of music with a rippling rhythmic undercurrent that seemed to tug the melody in another direction altogether, into the depths of a deep churning sea, but beautiful for all that, and so perfect and unexpected. She felt languid and free--all eyes were on her, every man turning to stare--and it came to her that she loved this place, this moment, these people. She could stay here forever, right here, in the gentle sway of the Japanese night.”