Politech mailing list archives
Information wants to be free: one last round of who-said-it debate
From: Declan McCullagh <declan () well com>
Date: Tue, 03 May 2005 22:19:59 -0700
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 _______________________________________________ Politech mailing list Archived at http://www.politechbot.com/ Moderated by Declan McCullagh (http://www.mccullagh.org/)
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- Information wants to be free: one last round of who-said-it debate Declan McCullagh (May 03)