Information wants to be free: one last round of who-said-it debate

[Declan McCullagh <declan () well com>]

Previous Politech message:
http://www.politechbot.com/2005/04/28/setting-history-straight/


-------- Original Message --------
Subject: Re: [Politech] Setting history straight: Who said information 
wants to  be free? [fs]
Date: Mon, 2 May 2005 11:29:39 -0700 (PDT)
From: Bruce R Koball <bkoball () well com>
To: Roger Clarke <Roger.Clarke () xamax com au>
CC: Declan McCullagh <declan () well com>
References: <42706AF3.2000406 () well com> 
<p0610054bbe96232dbcea@[192.168.123.167]>

indeed... I found Roger's excellent page when I googled the phrase to get
the exact quote... didn't notice the Barlow hit, though...  hmmmm...
"generally credited... statement of the obvious"... not in 1984, I'll
wager.

-brk-


On Thu, 28 Apr 2005, Roger Clarke wrote:

> G'day Declan (hi Bruce)
>
> For the search-string "Information wants to be free", Google returns
> this first:
> http://www.anu.edu.au/people/Roger.Clarke/II/IWtbF.html
>
> And it returns this second:
> JPB's 'The Economy of Ideas '  Wired 2.03 - Mar 1994
> http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/2.03/economy.ideas_pr.html
> which decares:
> <heading> Information Wants to Be Free. </heading>
> Stewart Brand is generally credited with this elegant statement of
> the obvious ...
>
> Regards  ...  Roger
> >Moderated by Declan McCullagh (http://www.mccullagh.org/)
>
> --
> Roger Clarke              http://www.anu.edu.au/people/Roger.Clarke/
>
> Xamax Consultancy Pty Ltd, 78 Sidaway St, Chapman ACT 2611 AUSTRALIA
>                  Tel: +61 2 6288 1472, and 6288 6916
> mailto:Roger.Clarke () xamax com au            http://www.xamax.com.au/
>
> Visiting Professor in the Baker Cyberspace Law & Policy Centre, UNSW
> Visiting Professor in the eCommerce Program, University of Hong Kong
> Visiting Fellow in Computer Science,  Australian National University










-------- Original Message --------
Subject: Re: Setting history straight: Who saidinformation wants to be 
free? [fs]
Date: Thu, 28 Apr 2005 14:37:49 -0400
From: Seth Johnson <seth.johnson () realmeasures dyndns org>
Organization: Real Measures
To: dave () farber net
CC: declan () well com
References: <BE967076.31762%dave () farber net>


Hello Dave, Declan,

I always correct people who say this.  Information *is* free,
once it's published, and it always has been.  If you're talking
about copyright, copyright covers original expression, not the
information conveyed by a work.  If you're talking about
patents, patents cover manufacturing and marketing an innovative
concrete product, not abstract knowledge.  The point of both
forms of exclusive rights is to provide information to the
public.

I've long maintained that the phrase "information wants to be
free" is counterproductive.  Our tradition has long been that
information is free, not that it "wants to" be.  If more people
had been insisting on this point clearly, a lot of the ridiculous
developments we've been seeing with exclusive rights policy
applied in an overbearing way, might have been held off.


Seth Johnson

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