Comments on: Guest Post–Information Wants to Be Free

By: Jason Block

Jason Block — Wed, 22 Dec 2010 01:07:28 +0000

The fact that ‘information’ is created and spread by human agency implies ethical responsibility on the individual and societal levels. There are other inevitable ‘tendencies’ which society is specifically designed to discourage.

By: Jeff VanderMeer

Jeff VanderMeer — Fri, 10 Dec 2010 21:09:11 +0000

Hey, I find this piece fairly useless. Yay, information should be free. But if you think a novel is “information,” then go read an essay.

JeffV

By: Marilynn Byerly

Marilynn Byerly — Fri, 10 Dec 2010 17:13:18 +0000

One important point many creative people want heard is that INFORMATION AND ENTERTAINMENT ARE NOT THE SAME THING.

Works of entertainment like songs, novels, artwork, etc., are leisure activity and a luxury, not an absolute necessity like some information. Works of entertainment are not just facts floating in a sea of copyrighted text, they are whole in and of themselves.

If you can’t read the latest King novel, no harm is done, and nothing in the world changes.

Stealing entertainment is short-term selfishness and long term self-destruction because copyrighted entertainment, by its nature, must have some form of payment for the creator. If King’s income for his books slows to a trickle, you can be dang sure he’ll stop writing.

By: JUAN D GOMEZ V

JUAN D GOMEZ V — Fri, 10 Dec 2010 14:05:18 +0000

Your post reminded me of a talk I recently listened to about “memes” and “temes”
Susan Blackmore is very convincing when she says its not a poetic thing. Information wants to be free, it does have an agenda, we are only its vessels one way or another.

http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/susan_blackmore_on_memes_and_temes.html

By: Neil in Chicago

Neil in Chicago — Thu, 09 Dec 2010 23:22:26 +0000

the two versions I’ve collected:
In fall 1984, at the first Hackers’ Conference, I said in one discussion session: “On the one hand information wants to be expensive, because it’s so valuable. The right information in the right place just changes your life. On the other hand, information wants to be free, because the cost of getting it out is getting lower and lower all the time. So you have these two fighting against each other.
— Stewart Brand, May 1985 *Whole Earth Review*, p. 49.

Information Wants To Be Free. Information also wants to be expensive. Information wants to be free because it has become so cheap to distribute, copy, and recombine — too cheap to meter. It wants to be expensive because it can be immeasurably valuable to the recipient. That tension will not go away. It leads to endless wrenching debate about price, copyright, ‘intellectual property’, the moral rightness of casual distribution, because each round of new devices makes the tension worse, not better.
— Stewart Brand