Since I became chairman, I’ve tried to turn EFF into civil liberties and responsibilities.
As long as a government can come and shoot you, you can’t jump on the Internet to freedom.
Few influential people involved with the Internet claim that it is a good in and of itself. It is a powerful tool for solving social problems, just as it is a tool for making money, finding lost relatives, receiving medical advice, or, come to that, trading instructions for making bombs.
I’ve seen disgusting excess in business, and I’ve seen disgusting excess in Washington. But at the same time, I’ve certainly learned that Washington matters and that you can’t ignore it, especially when you get into telecom.
Having seen a non-market economy, I suddenly understood much better what I liked about a market economy.
Owning the intellectual property is like owning land: You need to keep investing in it again and again to get a payoff; you can’t simply sit back and collect rent.
Dyson’s Law: Do ask; don’t lie.
As an investor in small companies, I don’t care how rich Microsoft is. I care about what my opportunities are.
I think we really made a mistake in separating the Internet from capitalism in a certain way that is bad for our country.
When I was a young student, I thought grow-ups would come and make things work. Now I realize that grown-ups are just kids with wrinkles.
I would much rather see responsibilities exercised by individuals than have them imposed by the government.
I think that the use of copyright is going to change dramatically. Part of it is economics. There is just going to be so much content out there – there’s a scarcity of attention. Information consumes attention, and there’s too much information.
I would like to see us shake-in, instead of a shakeout, in the sense that it’s true that there’s a lot of junk online, and we have to filter it and so forth.
I think I have the right to know what Steve Forbes paid in taxes – I don’t think there should be a law. I think there should be a presumption. I wouldn’t vote for a guy who wouldn’t reveal what he paid in taxes. That kind of thing.
I think copyright is moral, proper. I think a creator has the right to control the disposition of his or her works – I actually believe that the financial issue is less important than the integrity of the work, the attribution, that kind of stuff.
I became a real free market fanatic. I’m probably less so now than even two or three years ago.
I joined the board of the Santa Fe Institute.
But there is a corollary to freedom and that’s personal responsibility, and the real challenge is how you generate that personal responsibility without imposing it.
The Net is not a single home. Rather, it’s an environment where thousands of small homes and communities can form and define and design themselves.
We invented our computers in the ’80s. We networked them together in the ’90s. Now we’re giving them eyes, ears and sensory organs. And we’re asking them to observe and manipulate the world on our behalf.
I personally like the certainty of death. It is amazingly relaxing to realize that one can’t do everything. If I knew I were going to live forever, I would feel obligated to fix all my imperfections. I would have to learn many more languages; I would worry about my teeth not holding out; I would have to make amends for all the mistakes I have made.