Reconciling Information Privacy and Liberty?

thetan asks: "F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote that 'The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposing ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function.' However, for many outsiders, it's hard to understand how cliques reconcile seemingly contrarian views. For example, many US Republicans are against abortion but in favour of the death penalty (no doubt they have their reasons). Amongst the Slashdot commentariat, one often hears that information wants to be free, almost as a catchcry of the open source, copyfight and related info-libertarian movements. OTOH, these same Slashdot readers stridently guard their privacy, so presumably information about their shopping preferences or websurfing does not 'want to be free'. How does the intelligent and functional Slashdot crowd reconcile the liberty of other people's information with the privacy of their own?"

Comments

Re:Libre, *not* gratis.

[Kelson]

Of course, "Information wants to be free" originally was about gratis. The second, forgotten half of the phrase was "Information also wants to be expensive." It was meant to describe the conflict between the ever-easier, ever-cheaper methods to store and transmit information, and the ever-increasing value placed upon information by those who create and/or use it.

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

Re:Libre, *not* gratis.

[ccandreva]

Talk about contradictory views -- they can kill it, but not give it away ?