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Information Doesn't Want To Be Free; People Want It
Captain Pooh writes "Nicholas Petreley expresses his opinion about how "Information Doesn't Want To Be Free--People Want It To Be". " Pretty provocative piece - although his reasoning is sound.
Superficially, it may seem anthropomorphic. But it is essetially the Second Law of Thermodynamics.
Nitrogen molecules do not want to gather in the corner of my room - they want to spread out. In the same way, information wants to be free. And it will be.
It's a law of nature. And if a government or corporation wishes to oppose a fundamental law of nature, then they must spend a proportionate amount of energy to maintain the highly ordered state of control or secrecy.
And the higher the temperature in thermodynamics, the more effort is required to maintain that ordered state.
The internet has raised the temperature in the information mileu by an order of magnitude. I don't think any company or government will have the resources to maintain the highly ordered and unlikely state of control.
Information wants to be free. Regardless of your moral position, it's a law of nature. This is what the author of the article fails to see or acknowledge.
A priori, there is no moral reason why copying and sharing pure patterns, regardless of their origin, is immoral. I don't care if somebody spent a whole lifetime to create a pattern. I have considered several kinds of moral thinking - Kant's categorical imperative, Mill's utilitarianism, Chritianity, and my own intuitive ideas on what is moral. I simply fail to see how, in light of these moral theories, copying patterns could be immoral.
I believe it is immoral to unnecessarily limit the freedom of a human being. Copyright and patent laws seek to limit our freedoms in profound ways, and increasingly so. Does the benefit the we, as a society, gain from these laws outweigh the sacrifice of our freedoms? I say that the benefits are to very few while the freedoms of everyone are sacrified. I don't think it's good social policy.
I believe people have a basic human right to record and remember their life experiences as accurately as they see fit - using their brains or brain aumenting devices such as computers, tape recorders, or some day neural implants. I also believe they have the right to share their experiences with arbitrary fidelity. If you seek to limit these self-evident (to me, at least) rights, you had better have a damned good reason that benefits everyone more than it harms everyone. I can't think of such a reason.
If you don't want your information to be spread, the keep it in your head. If you send sound waves, text, or code in someone's direction, then that becomes part of their life experience which they then have the right to remember and share as they see fit.
Saying "information wants to be free" is like saying "water wants to run downhill". Sure there's a force behind it (people want information). But IMO the saying just means that stored data will tend to become free.
* And remember, it's spelled N-e-t-s-c-a-p-e, but it's pronounced "Mozilla."
I hear your credit card screaming, sitting captive in your wallet. "Free me post my number on the web where all the world can know me!" it says.
"Nicholas Petreley expresses his opinion about how "Information Doesn't Want To Be Free--People Want It To Be". " Pretty provocative piece - although his reasoning is sound."
I think we can come to this conclusion ourself, if need be, thanks.
Petrely writes:
"The fact is our current system entitles us to some free information, and it requires us to purchase or license other 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. But 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,..."
There are two types of objects - tangible and intangible. Tangible objects (food, your car, a minidisc player) can only have one owner at any given moment. Intangible objects (music, inventions, words) can have any number of owners. Physical objects have a single owner out of nessesity - it cannot exist in two places at the same time. But what about an idea? Clearly I can make a copy of your poem without depriving you of that poem.
So what is the point of giving exclusive ownership of an idea when it can be shared by all without depriving the creator of that idea? It is power, clearly enough. I have, you don't, let's negotiate. It is easy to use Napster as a sort of strawman to attack, but it's another issue entirely when you look at intellectual property in the light of the AIDS epedemic where millions have died and continue to die because pharmecuticals own the right to the knowledge. "Give us a half billion for the rights to create our vaccine. OH, you don't have that kind of cash? Oh, your entire country's GDP isn't even half that? Sorry." How about irrigation technologies? I could go on but I think my point is made.
I'll grant that there needs to be an impetus for the company to create the vaccine in the first place, but once it's created that knowledge should be in the public domain.
"...and it demonstrates that what they are interested in is not free speech at all but getting stuff without paying for it."
This is akin to saying electronic hobbyists are only interested in descrambling their cable feed. Can it be a side result? Yes. Is it the point? No.
Are you not aware of what a 21st century, western idea ownership of knowledge is? Is it beyond your ability to comprehend - not even nessesarily to understand but to just acknowledge - that ownship of an idea is repugnent, almost humorous?
As an aside, I enjoy the fact that I can get a song and erase it if I don't like it. No blood no foul. I appreciate the fact that I haven't heard a single radio ad in 2 years. I can't name a single radio station and I live in metro Boston. I haven't seen a single TV ad that I haven't gone out of my way to see.
Free speech, Nick, isn't only about the right to speak myself but the right of others to speak so I might hear them. You've got this idea that free speech means "me me me" but what it really does (and should) stand for is "them them them". And what does a company that control information fear more than anything? Loss of market share, loss of mindshare, loss of control.
And what is intellectual property about if not control?
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The central problem here, which this article makes perfectly clear, is that someone who owns and creates something has every right to sell it under any terms they want. If those terms suck, no one will buy it.
Exactly. They will download it on MP3.
Just because people want something does not mean they deserve to have it- especially not on terms THEY choose.
Paying money doesn't mean I "deserve" to hear a song. I am entitled to use my ears whether the record execs want me to or not. If someone is playing a CD on their speakers and I walk by, I suppose you could say I don't "deserve" to be able to hear it, but it seems rather silly. Similarly, if I download a song and play it on my computer, you could say I don't "deserve" to be able to hear it. But it misses the point, really.
The point is that artists and record companies need to be reimbursed or else they won't be able to continue producing music. We shouldn't reimburse them simply because to do otherwise would be "wrong." We should reimburse them because we appreciate their efforts, we enjoy their songs, and we want them to produce more. If we do not enjoy the songs, if we wish they'd stop putting out such crap, then to reimburse them would be counter-productive. (Some might even say harmful.)
But you don't have the right to change the terms of their sale just because you don't like it, or because you think they're behind the times.
The way you're wording this is a bit odd. I suppose you could think of MP3 trading as "changing the terms of sale" but it only serves to obscure the issue. You could say "it is illegal to distribute copies of their copyrighted work" and I would say, "you know your Title XVII." When you say "you don't have the right" do you mean that we don't have the legal right, moral right, or what? Your own personal idea of what "rights" we have?
Speaking for myself, I believe we have the right (and sometimes obligation) to reimburse those who provide a valuable commodity, such as music or software; and we have the right to withhold reimbursement from those we choose. You may have your own idea, and the law certainly provides a different viewpoint.
You claim, in your September 4 Infoworld column, that Napster is all
about greed. The jury is still out on that. And it will stay out
until you can go buy the MP3 for an artist you hear on the radio, or
even an artist you heard when you were a teen (e.g. 10CC, or Seals and
Crofts, or Styx). Whenever you interfere with a market -- whenever
you tell people that they can't buy something -- you get a black
market.
Napster functions exactly like a black market, except that the price
is solely your time spent finding a good copy of what you want. Black
markets aren't about greed -- they're about buying what you want to
buy, not necessarily what's for sale. The RIAA wants to sell music
one way, and consumers want to buy it another way. They happen to be
paying a low price to get it that way, but there's no reason that has
to last.
If the RIAA *really* wants to find out if Napster is about greed or a
new business model, it'll go into competition with Napster. Surely
the RIAA knows how to set up a web server big enough to sell the same
content available via Napster. And they have very little to lose by
doing so, since most people are aware of the existance of Napster, and
frankly, Napster works, at least if you want a popular piece of music.
Only then will we be able to say whether Napster is about stealing or
sharing. One thing this economist can tell you for certain: the RIAA
will be as successful at suppressing music file copying as the US
government has been at suppressing some drugs. And the US government
has been throwing many people in jail for decades -- something the
RIAA has only fantasized about doing.
Don't piss off The Angry Economist
As recounted in this website, the phrase "information wants to be free" has a little-known counterpart: "information wants to be expensive." It was first uttered back in 1984 (now there's an ironic year for information wanting to be free!) by Stewart Brand:
(emphases mine)So, people, next time you use the phrase, please take a moment to reflect on what it really means?
--
Editor Emeritus and Senior Writer, TeleRead.org
Before you impugn the critical thinking skills of others, you might want to break out a logic textbook and look up the term "begging the question". In this case your thesis is that ideas are property per se, and therefore using those ideas without their owners' permission is theft. You then go on to prove your thesis by assuming as a premise that ideas are property per se, and therefore using those ideas without their owners' permission is theft. That is not logic in any meaningful sense. No progress is possible in this debate until people recognize that the real question is not, "Is it ok to steal?" but rather "Does it make sense to classify something that can be endlessly replicated without cost as `property'?"
The argument in favor of intellectual property is that creators need incentive to create. I'm not entirely sure I believe that, but it is certainly true that creative people need to pay their rent and grocery bills the same as everyone else. The arguments against intellectual property are, first, that people are naturally creative, and they create more efficiently when they are free to build on previous work, and, second, that intellectual property laws can be used to stifle freedom.
The latter point is most troubling to me. As our economy evolves, we expect information products to become every bit as much necessities of life as food and shelter; in fact, in many cases we expect information products to displace physical goods as necessities of life. With physical goods the economy has always worked on the principle that once you buy it it's yours, and the seller has no further say in what you do with it. Not so, intellectual property. Intellectual property is governed by a license which binds you to an ongoing commitment to the seller. Vendors of intellectual property would have us believe that the terms of these license could be literally anything: a continuing financial commitment, refraining from using competing products, and disclosing sensitive personal information are all terms that have appeared in intellectual property licenses, and we can only expect the license terms to grow bolder.
To me, finding a balance for intellectual property law is the single most important challenge facing our civilization today. What good are the guarantees of liberty we have worked so hard to build (literally centuries of human endeavor) if we and our posterity are going to have to license ourselves into bondage just to participate in the digital economy? A fair and equitable balance must be found. I don't pretend that that balance will be found in "information wants to be free", but there's a lot less danger in that than in the "mine, all mine" espoused by the intellectual property industries and their apologists.
-rpl
The first time I read Stallman's manifesto, the first thing that popped into my mind was, "Information wants to be free?" Now, FSF advocates under close scrutiny will admit that this only works as a figurative statement, but the fact of the matter is that Stallman uses it as base for his ethics of intellectual property.
What people need to realize is that information is such (vis-a-vis white noise) because someone put effort into creating it; to say that information has some intrinsic quality, or worse desire, to be free is ascribe behavior that is downright anthropomorphic to well-defined, abstract concept. That it is infinitely duplicable does not mean that there is not compensation due; a person is providing you a service, and you should reimburse that person for his time and effort. I like the author's charge: If you don't like the pay music, create and distribute free music.
To this end, I like Stephen King's revenue model: Honesty. He writes "Don't steal from the blind newsboy;" he has successfully gambled that people will pay the small one time fee to experience his work, not just out of grace ("patronage"), but due to a sense of ethics ("captialism").
*** Proven iconoclast, aspiring epicurean ***
It doesn't matter whether or not the RIAA is bad--and I'll be right there with you saying that they are. The problem is that whether you like it or not, the music shared on Napster is someone else's property. And taking that property makes you a thief.
If I write a piece of software that I want to sell commercially, I don't want the l33t skr1pt k1dd33z spreading it all over the net. I want my money's worth. Sound greedy, immoral, and ineffective? Think of it another way.
If I write a piece of software that I want to distribute under the GPL, I don't want Microsoft to take, modify, and resell it as proprietary software. I want the users to get their freedom.
If you're going to argue against rights to control your own media, then you're going to have to get rid of the good as well as the bad. You can't have it any other way.
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"Information wants to be free" really should be "Informations can be free." No other property can be given away without loss by the owner. You give away a physical thing, you don't have it any more. You give away information, you've still got it.
What Napster has done is encourage others to break the law. Is the law just? Depends on whether it's right to create artificial scarcity of information (i.e., copyright). How do we determine what's right? Look at the consequences of making it legal versus making it illegal.
Case 1 (copyright): Copyright exists so that information can be shoehorned into traditional economic systems that are based upon scarcity, supply and demand, etc. If copyright is enforced, it's business as usual. If it's poorly enforced, you get the chaos that's happening now in society (a Bad Thing, since it discourages content creation and encourages the lawyers). How to enforce copyright in the *gag* "information age" is the big problem.
Case 2 (no copyright): Without copyright, traditional economic systems fail, and information creators are not rewarded. Thus, production of information decreases. This is a Bad Thing. The only solution is to find an alternate economic system. Just as a quick reminder, communism doesn't work, and all those other cool-sounding systems (street performers' protocol, etc.) haven't been tested in a large-scale economy. There's nothing that's known to work.
In other words, behind door A, we have chaos and uncertainty, and behind door B we have uncertainty and chaos.
I personally would like to see a system where all artists get accounts on PayPal or something like that, and we can just donate whatever we feel like for each MP3 we download (preferably off of the artist's high-speed, high-quality site). Of course, people will rationalize their way into not paying: "they're already rich", "musicians get all the chicks", "they suck too much to deserve to get paid for this MP3 that I'm keeping"... Nobody really knows if enough people will pay to make it worth while for artists. And before you start yelling about indie bands giving away their work, remember that a lot of them are doing that to build a fan base so they can start charging for it.
Finally, remember that what's right and wrong (and legal) is decided, to some extent, by society. Copyright is currently part of our social contract. For it to be right to ignore copyright would require a fundamental shift in the public viewpoint. This shift seems to have already begun, but it hasn't happened yet.
Do we have to abide by copyright until such a shift happens, or are we morally justified in ignoring copyright since we are leading the charge into this new economics of information? That's the real question.
Bullshit. The central problem here, which this article makes perfectly clear, is that someone who owns and creates something has every right to sell it under any terms they want. If those terms suck, no one will buy it. Just because people want something does not mean they deserve to have it- especially not on terms THEY choose. Piddling about what file format the music comes in is just plain cheap. It's like saying that just because a car doesn't come in red, you have the right to steal a car and paint it red. Now obviously Intellectual Property is a whole different ballgame. But the issue there is that it's very hard to regulate and define- NOT that people have any moral right to what they want. Metalica wants to sell their music in Cd format only? You think that bussiness model sucks? Fine- drive them out of bussiness with your own wussy rock band and its leet online distribution. But you don't have the right to change the terms of their sale just because you don't like it, or because you think they're behind the times. And seriously, it's maddening how little anyone knows about the real costs of the music industry anyway. People go on and on about Cd pressing as if that was even a drop in the bucket of what it takes to make, market, and promote a hit band (plus lots of bands that never get a hit). Now I hate the way the commercial music biz works and degrades musical spirit, but the fact is, musicians trade their song rights and autonomy for that chance that the record comapny can make them famous and rich. You may think that's sickening, but it's a choice they make, and the legal terms they agree to. If you don't like it, well, no one is forcing you to buy their music. Downloading it off the internet for free and claiming you're "freeing" it is a thin lie to conceal that you DO want the music produced in that way- huge promotional charges, slick studios- it proves that you want that, and like anyone else, you just want it for free. So: here's your high horse, and here's "off." I'd suggest "off."
Maybe it isn't fair to pin this on most open source advocates, but there are certainly interesting dichotomies in what Slashdot considers "news for nerds." On the one hand, any license that isn't strictly free is shouted down. Borland C++ is branded as free-as-in-beer and therefore unacceptable. Any story that mentions freedom of speech gets hairtrigger responses. Stories about The Man (i.e. Microsoft) are snickered about in a frenzy of populist hooplah.
At the same time, there's a worship of corporately created pop culture: The Simpsons, X-Files, Hollywood movies, big budget anime, The Cartoon Network. Now wait, this isn't corporate-fed culture, it's special stuff created only for geeks in the know, right? Not like other crap, like Friends. That's for the masses.
I think quite a few people would like these to collide, so everything they are interested in can be free of charge. But they are two completely different things, the second of which is created by a system that arguably would not exist if free everything was the order of the day. If you're really anti-corporate, then you should stop watching TV, stop buying CDs from major labels, and stop watching anything but indie films. That's much better than whining about how corporations should spend millions of dollars entertaining you for free.