Forget the 18th century, the 19th century, even at the birth of the 20th century. Here's my favorite example, here: 1928, my hero, Walt Disney, created this extraordinary work, the birth of Mickey Mouse in the form of Steamboat Willie. But what you probably don't recognize about Steamboat Willie and his emergence into Mickey Mouse is that in 1928, Walt Disney, to use the language of the Disney Corporation today, 'stole' Willie from Buster Keaton's 'Steamboat Bill.' It was a parody, a take-off; it was built upon Steamboat Bill. Steamboat Bill was produced in 1928 - no 14 years - just take it, rip, mix, and burn, as he did to produce the Disney empire.

That free culture was carried to America; that was our birth - 1790. We established a regime that left creativity unregulated. Now it was unregulated because c…

Now the Disney Corporation could do this because that culture lived in a commons, an intellectual commons, a cultural commons, where people could freely take a…

In 1774, free culture was born. In a case called Donaldson v. Beckett in the House of Lords in England, free culture was made because copyright was stopped. In…

Stone-cutters fighting time with marble, you fore-defeated Challengers of oblivion Eat cynical earnings, knowing rock splits, records fall down, The square-lim…

History repeats itself, but the special call of an art which has passed away is never reproduced. It is as utterly gone out of the world as the song of a destr…

At present, I am a poet trying to be a soldier. To tell the truth, I am not interested in writing nowadays, except in so far as writing is the expression of so…