Does Information Want To Be Free?
...example, when you go to the library, you expect to check out a book for free. When you listen to the radio, you expect to hear music for free. When you turn on your television, you expect to watch all the programs for free. These examples can encourage you to believe that information is free. But what if you wanted to personally own a copy of that book you checked out of the library, wouldn’t you be willing to pay for a copy? I bet you would! Or if you wanted to personally own a copy of that song you heard on the radio, you would be willing to pay for the CD. If you wanted to own a copy of the movie you just watched, you would be willing to buy the video. Even though people may think that information should be free, they are also willing to pay for the same free information. Therefore I believe that we pay for the medium, not the message. As a society, we perceive that the value exists in the copy, not in the content....which is free. After a little research on Stewart Brand and his famous quote that reads, “Information wants to be free - because it is now easy to copy and distribute casually - and information wants to be expensive - because in an Information Age, nothing is so valuable as the right information at the right time,” I now truly believe that information wants to be free. Quite a lot of information is available on the web for free, but consumers should be careful. Many organizations post valuable information as a public service. Other legal information is offered on commercial web sites as an inducement to buy other products or services. For media companies, the early days of the Web resembled a land grab, as they fought for the online audience. But today, the people running major content sites are more like geologists hoping to strike oil in uncertain terrain. (ABC News) Two years after the dot-com mania began to fade, web executives are still trying to reconcile one of the medium's best-known dictums - “that information wants to be free” - with the fact that businesses exist to make money, and that most Web sites have not. The spread of mp3 files, and their centrality to Kazaa, mislead the debate over free and copyrighted content. Lots of people are willing to download free music files from strangers, because they find out if the sampling quality is lousy or the song breaks off halfway through, nothing has been lost. They can go back to Kazaa and try another site. The music from Kazaa would not be available unless you license this information. You may not like the fact that some information must be licensed, but that's how it is. Those who want information to be free as a matter of principle should create some information and make it free. What they shouldn't do is license or buy existing information that is not free and then cut it loose without permission. That's just plain wrong, and it demonstrates what they are interested in, it’s not free speech at all but getting stuff without paying for it. This is the problem I have with Kazaa. Kazaa is a fine technology that could be put to good use but so far the controversy over Kazaa doesn't seem to be about free speech. It's about downloading free information. It's about a technology that makes it possible to circumvent the intent of publishing music on CDs. And the controversy persists only because, so far, few people have suffered severe consequences. If you want the system to change, then change it the way Linux has changed the complexion of software. Change it by recording new music with musicians who buy in to your new way of distributing music and then give their music away. If people want music to be free, they should create free music and distribute it. We all have the right and opportunity to create new ways of doing things. Linux demonstrates that such efforts can be highly successful. But we do not have a right to subvert existing systems in the name of free speech just because we have the t...