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@private> To: Roger Clarke <Roger.Clarke@private> CC: Declan McCullagh <declan@private> References: <42706AF3.2000406@private> <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@private 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@private> Organization: Real Measures To: dave@private CC: declan@private References: <BE967076.31762%dave@private> 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 _______________________________________________ Politech mailing list Archived at http://www.politechbot.com/ Moderated by Declan McCullagh (http://www.mccullagh.org/)
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.3 : Tue May 03 2005 - 22:51:23 PDT