38 Quotes by Edward Felten

The DMCA seems to cast a very wide net and will catch a lot of things besides computer security,

The problem – when you cast your net that wide – is you inevitably catch something you don’t want to catch.

It’s abundantly clear by now that no DRM system can stop serious pirates. A DRM system that stops serious pirates, and simultaneously gives broad leeway to ordinary users, is even harder to imagine.

Vigorous enforcement of copyrights themselves is an important part of the picture. But I don’t think that expanding the legal definition of copyright outside of actual copyright infringement is the right move.

The next generation of innovators, who need neutrality the most, are not at the bargaining table. They’re hard at work in their labs or classrooms, dreaming of the next big thing, and hoping that the Internet is as open to them as it was to the founders of Google.

The secret of the Internet’s success has been its openness to new services.

And the user may have a higher comfort level deciding what information to provide rather than worrying about what inferences might be made from what they’ve gathered.

We’re in a situation where the solutions that we have are not good enough. The way to improve anything is to have a discussion about its flaws. To understand what the one or two or three things are about it that would help fix it. The DMCA makes it dangerous to have that conversation.

The question is not whether we want to keep this open, neutral Internet – we do, or should – but whether government rulemaking can give us the result we want.