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Public Domain Quotes

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“Naturally there was the notion of private property as a pragmatic concept, for individuals or groups have a proclivity to tend to their own possessions with greater care and reverence than they would to common property...in such cases, the notion of ownership would underscore a relationship existing between distinct people, rather than a legal association between a person and that which is said to be possessed, which is to say that ownership was, in its strictest definition, the societal distinction between the owner and the non-owner with respect to the property in question. Beyond this, the concept of ownership varied further from society-to-society according to their respective derivations of natural law, legal positivism and legal realism. Some societies—the indigenous Itako tribes...for example—railed against their governments’ initiatives for private ownership in favor of maintaining equal access to available resources (in the case of the Itako, this was due primarily to the fact that theirs were kin-based tribes whose membership sought to live communally). All the same, even this notion of common possession seemed to me rather arrogant, for the necessitated existence of a public domain was rooted in the shared human dominance over the objects or organisms in question. And so, in my dizzying contemplation, I began to yearn for a greater law that stretched to vast limits beyond that which governed humanity alone. The voice in my mind spoke earnestly of the need for a unifying jurisprudence which could preside over all of Nature’s manifestations in a manner either probabilistically fair or mathematically arbitrary. And perhaps, still, this would not be enough.”

NatureJusticePropertyCommunismManifestationMaterialismProperty RightsNatural LawTribalismEgalitarianismJurisprudencePublic DomainEntitlementsCommon PropertyHuman ArroganceArbitrarinessChattelPrivate OwnershipHuman DominanceKin Selective AltruismLegal PositivismLegal Realism
Book:Only the Deplorable
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“We have a right to expect that the best trained, the best educated men on the Pacific slope, the Rocky Mountains, and great plains States will take the lead in the preservation and right use of forests, in securing the right use of waters, and in seeing that our land policy is not twisted from its original purpose, but is perpetuated by amendment, by change when such change is necessary in the life of that purpose, the purpose being to turn the public domain into farms each to be the property of the man who actually tills it and makes his home in it.”

MenStatesUseHomePurposeTurnsWaterSeeingLandPolicyHe ManMountainOriginalsPropertyForestsEducatedFarmsAmendmentsPreservationDomainTwistedDinosaursPacificSlopesLead InEducated ManPublic DomainRocky MountainUses Of Water
Author:Theodore Roosevelt
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“Much of the early engineering development of digital computers was done in universities. A few years ago, the view was commonly expressed that universities had played their part in computer design, and that the matter could now safely be left to industry. [...] Apart from the obvious functions of keeping in the public domain material that might otherwise be hidden, universities can make a special contribution by reason of their freedom from commercial considerations, including freedom from the need to follow the fashion.”

NeedsYearsMatterReasonDoneMightLeftViewsSpecialFashionDesignMaterialsDevelopmentIndustryComputerYears AgoFunctionIncludingUniversityObviousContributionConsiderationDigitalEngineeringDomainPublic Domain
Author:Maurice Wilkes
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“For better or worse, we are the Court of Appeals for the Hollywood Circuit. Millions of people toil in the shadow of the law we make, and much of their livelihood is made possible by the existence of intellectual property rights. But much of their livelihood - and much of the vibrancy of our culture - also depends on the existence of other intangible rights: The right to draw ideas from a rich and varied public domain, and the right to mock, for profit as well as fun, the cultural icons of our time.”

PeopleWellsMadeIdeasLawCultureFunExistenceMillionsRichRightsDependsIntellectualDrawsShadowHollywoodCourtPropertyProfitAppealsOur TimeToilDomainIconsMockProperty RightsCircuitsLivelihoodIntangibleIntellectual PropertyVibrancyPublic Domain
Author:Alex Kozinski
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“Creativity builds upon the public domain. The battle that we're fighting now is about whether the public domain will continue to be fed by creative works after their copyright expires. That has been our tradition but that tradition has been perverted in the last generation. We're trying to use the Constitution to reestablish what has always been taken for granted--that the public domain would grow each year with new creative work.”

TryingYearsHas BeensUseLastsFightingGrowsCreativityCreativeTakenGenerationsBattleTraditionConstitutionGrantedFedsDomainCopyrightCreative WorkTaken For GrantedPublic Domain
Author:Lawrence Lessig
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“'Freeing' a literary work into the public domain is less a public benefit than a transfer of wealth from the families of American writers to the executives and stockholders of various businesses who will continue to profit from, for example, 'The Garden Party,' while the descendants of Katherine Mansfield will not.”

WealthPartyExampleBenefitsGardenProfitVariousExecutivesDomainTransfersDescendantsAmerican WriterLiterary WorksPublic Domain
Author:Mark Helprin
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“I have a piano in my living room that I mess around on a little bit and when I asked Len if I could find a piece of music, I went through a **** load of classical music to find something that I felt had a certain urgency to it, but also with a hint of melancholia and maybe a sense of longing. I found that which is public domain and I had a piano teacher to go through it with me.”

IfsLittlesCertainFoundFeltBitsRoomsTeacherPiecesLittle BitLongingMessPianoIf I CouldLoadDomainClassical MusicHintsUrgencyLiving RoomPublic DomainPiano Teachers
Author:Colin Farrell
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“Even thought this is a remarkable story [The danish Girl] and these are two fascinating people in their own right, Lili's story had been in the public domain but this had somehow slipped out of sight. It seemed bizarre then but I couldn't have imagined releasing the film in a climate like today around trans issues and the comfort people have about it in the public eye.”

PeopleTwoStoriesEyeTodayFilmGirlIssuesComfortSightClimateFascinatingRemarkableBizarreDomainTransPublic EyeDanishPublic Domain
Author:Lucinda Coxon
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“You'll have to have the governments sell off all of their public domains; sell off their railroads, sell off their public land. You'll essentially have to introduce neo-feudalism. You'll have to roll the clock of history back a thousand years, and reduce the European population to debt slavery. It's as simple a solution as the Eurozone has imposed on Greece. And it's a solution that the leaders and the banks are urging for responsible economists to promote for the population at large.”

YearsGovernmentSimpleLeaderLandThousandSolutionsResponsibleSlaverySellsPopulationDebtClockIntroducingThousand YearsEconomistDomainGreeceRailroadsFeudalismEurozonePublic DomainPublic Lands
Author:Michael Hudson
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“All manners of freedom, including freedom of expression, freedom of conscious, freedom of thought...it accepts tolerance. But it is not an atheist society. Religion is the private affair of an individual...be present in the public domain, but state has to be clearly separated from religion. When I'm speaking, I'm speaking only for myself. At the same time, I know that these ideas have wide support among the Iranian population.”

KnowsIdeasStatesIndividualAcceptingSupportExpressionConsciousIncludingAffairAtheistPopulationWideToleranceMannersDomainFreedom Of ThoughtFreedom Of ExpressionIranianPublic DomainHeist Society
Author:Akbar Ganji
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“In the West, when all of these reactors, nuclear reactors, are matters...part of the public domain, there are all kinds of supervision over them. We see that the ecological movement, environmentalist movement, organizes all kinds of demonstrations against these. They lie on railroads, they tie themselves to the gates.”

KindMatterLyingMovementWestNuclearAll KindsTiesGatesOrganizeDomainDemonstrationEcologicalRailroadsEnvironmentalistSupervisionPublic DomainNuclear Reactors
Author:Akbar Ganji
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“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.”

TodayCultureForceGrowsCreativityTechnologyCreativeRichFireImpossibleBuildingIntellectualPropertyCreatorNurtureDomainScience And TechnologyIntellectual PropertyTamedNew CulturesPublic Domain
Author:Alex Kozinski
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“Only when he has published his ideas and findings has the scientist made his contribution, and only when he has thus made it part of the public domain of scholarship can he truly lay claim to it as his own. For his claim resides only in the recognition accorded by peers in the social system of science through reference to his work.”

MadeIdeasScienceSocialFindingsScientistAccountsClaimsLaysMade ItRecognitionContributionPeersDomainScholarshipSocial SystemsPublic Domain
Author:Robert K. Merton
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