Often forgotten, or ignored, the whole quote, part of it often used to express a desire for freedom to access information, from a consumer's point of view "...information wants to be free" is:
"On the one hand information wants to be expensive, because it's so valuable. The right information in the right place just changes your life. On the other hand, information wants to be free, because the cost of getting it out is getting lower and lower all the time. So you have these two fighting against each other"
While the quote may be abused, anyone that believes that Franklin, would support gun control does not understand history. In 1776 I am sure you would have been a Tory siding with the Crown.
Incidentally, the "yell fire in a crowded theater" quote is also frequently abused, as it was part of a blatantly wrong and later overturned Supreme Court opinion holding that it was illegal to oppose the draft (which probably is an essential freedom).
I'll have to look it up, because I'm pretty sure they didn't find you could. They overturned the actual suppressing draft opposition.
You definitely don't have the right to directly endanger lives via "speech" - i.e. you can't claim free speech as protection for spreading false or misleading information that results in death, at least knowingly (which is more often the crux of such an argument).
Under the Brandenburg v. Ohio ruling, the State can only prohibit "dangerous" speech if it is both intended and likely to incite imminent lawless action. The opinion is explicitly overturning the later case of Whitney v. California but in doing so fundamentally undermines Justice Holmes' opinion in Schenck. To quote the opinion:
"Freedoms of speech and press do not permit a State to forbid advocacy of the use of force or of law violation except where such advocacy is directed to inciting or producing imminent lawless action and is likely to incite or produce such action."
I do not think distributing pamphlets advocating resisting the draft meets this standard.
EDIT: On rereading, it looks like your comment is saying that yelling fire in a crowded theater remains prohibited. I quite agree. I just think it's misleading to cite a piece of an opinion which was largely overturned as evidence for some legal position. Rather the later case law should be cited to make such an argument.
Doctorow echoes, more clearly and vividly than most, Sid Meier's succinct formulation: "Beware of he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart he dreams himself your master."
Because that's what this is ultimately about: whether we want our children to be digital sharecroppers or citizens whose right to read is respected and who can be positively enabled to stand on the shoulders of giants when it comes to access to knowledge.
Nit: that almost certainly wasn't something Meier wrote. It was either Brian Reynolds or somebody on the writing staff (likely Michael Ely, who wrote a lot of the fluff). Meier's involvement with Civ and Civ-alikes steadily decreased after Civ I.
There's a difference between information and media. While Doctorow uses the term "information," he's really talking about professionally produced media. And mostly entertainment media, at that (NBC shows, his kid's book, etc.).
That stuff just doesn't get produced if there's not some way of generating income from it. And that requires some kind of barrier to distribution. Although the nature of that barrier -- technical, social, legal, whatever -- is very much up for debate.
Does that require some barrier? I don't think that's at all obvious.
Previous models for funding content are built around natural distribution barriers. E.g., it was hard making and getting books to people, so you used the distribution channel as the revenue channel. So I think most of our experience is like that.
But we now live in an age where distribution is effectively free. I just bought a book (yay, Ancillary Sword is out!). I paid for most of the distribution (I bought the tablet and pay for an Internet connection); the publisher, distributor, and retail channel together have a marginal cost measured in fractions of a cent. That changes things.
I think our closest historical example is broadcast radio and TV, which has never had a barrier to distribution. One way to fund that is ads, but there are others. For example, US public radio and the BBC produce a lot of high-quality, professionally-produced media and have for decades. Or we could look at newspaper serials, the format that gave us The Three Musketeers: newspapers print so many copies that sharing is easy; people paid because it was cheap and convenient.
But the interesting stuff is just getting started. Plenty of professional writers give a lot of stuff away for free on the web. I've helped fund a few different Kickstarter films, and would have been perfectly happy to throw in more if they had wanted to make the films available freely. Micropatronage is just getting going.
You assume that the value of TV content is whether you watch it, but mass media doesn't quite work the same way as, say, food.
The BBC produces a lot of programs that I don't want to watch, but that I do think are good for others to see. In other words, for society as a whole. Hence public television, hence funding through taxes. I'm not saying it's a perfect system, or that all BBC content falls under this, but it's certainly defendable.
Also, IMO based on what I've seen come out of public television in general, where the money comes from clearly has an effect on the type of content being produced and the "flavour" of it, and I think that adds value as well.
I think that's another way you could look at it, but I don't think that's necessary for my point, which is that barriers for distribution are not always necessary to get good content.
All I was assuming is that a) the content is professionally produced, and b) the people watching the content find it valuable. That you also find it valuable for them to watch it sounds like an excellent bonus.
>I think our closest historical example is broadcast radio and TV, which has never had a barrier to distribution.
Eh? Sure it has, in that the radio spectrum was appropriated as public property, and auctioned off to the highest bidder (or, the one with the most political connections - lot of corruption here to be sure). And you have to do it this way or the technology basically doesn't work, or at least it doesn't work very well with all the noise generated by competing broadcasters on the same frequency.
I'm using "barrier to distribution" here as from the person I'm replying to, a thing providing a choke point where you can collect revenue. You're using the words in a broader sense.
Also, I don't think you're right about the history of licensing. Spectrum auctions are relatively new, at least in the US. I'm pretty sure that during the time radio and TV were figuring out their business models, license fees were negligible. See, for example, Coase's 1959 paper, "The Federal Communications Commission"; his proposal of treating spectrum as a tradable property right was considered novel and radical.
> I'm pretty sure that during the time radio and TV were figuring out their business models, license fees were negligible.
Didn't know that - that's interesting. Still, the spectrum itself was regulated, right?
That sounds even worse, IMO. The fees may have been low, but even in the 50s, the right to broadcast on a particular frequency was worth heaps of money. So, if they weren't auctioning to the highest bidder, the frequency would go to whoever knew the right people in government (and paid them or gave them gifts, I would imagine).
50 years after the fact? Probably not. When it comes to corruption, an expensive resource being sold by the government for cheap is usually evidence enough. I don't think such thinking requires a high level of cynicism, does it?
In fact, in a sense the act itself is corruption anyway - forgoing potential revenue which would have to be made up in the form of taxes.
50 years after the fact is the best time to get evidence. Memoirs, personal files, government files: people are willing to say more, as it would come at no cost to them.
> When it comes to corruption, an expensive resource being sold by the government for cheap is usually evidence enough. What will come out probably has.
No, no it's not. One, Hanlon's Razor. Two, accusing actual people of crime and corruption should take more than your fantasies. And three public service is, as I said, an actual thing.
> In fact, in a sense the act itself is corruption anyway - forgoing potential revenue which would have to be made up in the form of taxes.
No, that's a modern corporatist take on how entities are supposed to function. Revenue maximization is a modern religion. As we already discussed, Coase's suggestion in 1959 that you should auction spectrum was novel and controversial. That you can only see alternatives to that as corruption says more about you than it does about the Federal Radio Commission of a century ago.
> BBC produce a lot of high-quality, professionally-produced media
It should be pointed out that the BBC is funded by a tax (the BBC license fee) that is levied whether you watch the BBC or not. Forcing people to pay for content they don't watch, whether it is high quality or not, isn't a good model (unless you are the BBC of course).
Everyone pays for content they don't watch - in the States, section of tax helps NPR and PBS (this miniscule support is dwindling). More often it is paid for by advertising and shows often have product placement (again, income). Advertising is a distributed non-government enforced tax on goods and services you buy and use.
It can be argued both ways, like "why should I pay for roads that I don't drive on?"
After all, content isn't "consumed" when watched, it's there forever (unless the BBC tape over the master).
I used to be a strong supporter of the BBC, but their news has been badly crippled by the Hutton report, BBC3 is a mess (not as bad as Channel 4), I'm not really interested in their drama, and their light entertainment is often cringeworthy.
> Forcing people to pay for content they don't watch, whether it is high quality or not, isn't a good model (unless you are the BBC of course).
Or Comcast. Just listen to the endless complaints about the zillion channels paid for versus the few that get watched.
But the "not a good model" thing is ideological, not practical. It undeniably works in the sense of sustainably producing high-quality content, which is the point at issue here.
Don't miss what gets tagged along on drm. Key quote:
"Adobe claims that these reports are not quite accurate. According to Adobe, the software only collects information about the book you are currently reading, not your entire library. It also collects information about where you are reading that book, how long you've been reading it, and how much you've read. "
Oh and the released that so it sent the information totally unencrypted even if you are completely batshit insane enough to "trust" a company that will be a completely different collection of people in 10 years time with different policies, different corporate ethics etc etc.
What you're reading. How long you've been reading it, where you are when you are reading it, what you are up to, which parts you read more than once. Don't miss this part of the DRM debate because any for DRM and against that really needs to be yelling it really, really, really loudly right now or it will be assumed this is what DRM is for.
No great fan of DRM myself, but I don't think the economic case is very strong here.
If strong DRM so obviously reduces sales, then are the publishers just ignorant of that? Of course not. It's because DRM is mostly about legal licensing and legal hardware standards, as discussed exhaustively in the OP here [1] and comments.
In my most cynical hours, I imagine that behind closed doors, the publishers are looking for ways to encourage piracy because of the boosts to overall enthusiasm that results (ie. free advertising), which is documented in the article.
My hypothesis: DRM is like magnetic healing bracelets. Do they work? No. Do people buy them? Yes. Are the purchasers just ignorant? No, not exactly. Ignorance isn't the problem, because telling them the facts doesn't change behavior.
People who buy magnetic healing bracelets want particular feelings more than they want to know the truth. So they buy the thing that gives them the feelings they want.
I suspect DRM is similar. Major media company executives like feeling in control. They don't like people "stealing" their content or doing "the wrong thing" with it. DRM gives them feelings of control, letting them turn the positive-sum game of entertainment back into a zero-sum dominance game.
Ridiculous, but that's what happens when your raw building material is primates, and then you give all the power to the ones best at climbing the primate dominance hierarchy.
Magnetic healing bracelets aren't a very good analogy. Digital locks actually do stop some people from copying. Does it stop informed/skilled people? No, neither do real locks but we keep putting them on houses and cars for good reason. Digital locks provide a non-zero level of actual security and a signal that the issuer intends to protect the content from unauthorized distribution.
If I leave my belongings out in the street tonight, I can imagine anything of nominal value will be gone by morning. I think more people would enjoy having my electronics than the latest Corey Doctorow novel. This isn't because the electronics industry hasn't made TV's and electronics available to the people in my community. It's because people prefer free to paying if all things are equal.
Instead I continue to keep my belongings in my house, with my doors generally closed and locked while I am out. When I am missing something, it's generally because I have misplaced it. Some people who do this do still get robbed but to say locks and doors and walls don't work is a bit silly.
> Digital locks actually do stop some people from copying.
Do they? Is it a significant proportion? My guess is no. If you've got evidence otherwise, I'd be interested to see it.
Most people get their entertainment from convenient sources. Amazon, Walmart, Comcast, Netflix. They could steal it, but generally it's easy enough to get their stuff from licensed channels that they just pay up.
That's not about digital locks. That's about legal versus illegal distribution channels, and the incentives distributors have in both instances. Those vendors I mention have all done a great job at making it easy, and they can afford to make those investments because the police won't be kicking down their doors for getting popular.
Publishers haven't come to terms with electronic distribution because they can't conceive of a world where the Publishers aren't needed for everything related to books.
Are we better off with/without Publishers? It depends. Certainly, there is some value in having a publisher - editing, guaranteed distribution, payment, etc. - all the things that would be time-consuming and take away from the writer's first love, writing. Along with that, there are annoyances as well - dodgy DRM, outdated ideas about format, etc.
It was easy when books were physical - a book was a solitary unit not easily shared.
Now, not so much. An eBook can be easily shared - in theory, without DRM, the author would make the $7.99 cover price once, the book would hit P-bay and that would be it.
To say that the problem is with people who don't value the author's work is an oversimplification, as well. Many people might value a work highly, but the electronic edition is easier or cheaper to get thru illicit means.
There are those who say that sharing is not theft - true, to an extent. It's not so much stealing as it is just shitting on the work that an author has done.
Which isn't to say that all authors are worth your time, either. Everyone has an opinion about what's good writing and what's not. Personally, I dig Terry Pratchett, but there are some who don't like his work. So to them, he's not worth the effort and expense of paying for to purchase a book.
Now, you might ask yourself: self, why would you buy a book you don't like? In my case, I want reading material and there's not much way of knowing if the book is any good before I buy it (space military novels). I've gotten halfway thru a book and realized: I blew $2.99 on complete shite and that sucks. It's only halfway thru the book that I realized that the work of the author hold no value for me (and maybe a bit of negative value).
However, the publisher is the one who got me - they set the price, they wrote the summary, they even sourced an attractive piece of art to cover the book. Ostensibly, they even edited it (though that's often rather spotty with self-published authors). So, a publisher still has some value to bring to even a crappy author.
It's a complex problem and one not likely to be solved because no one really likes to think about how they can make their own job redundant, at least not without getting a reward for it.
Unfortunately, belief systems that rely on the Just Worth Hypothesis[1] is are very common. Once consequence of this is the very common belief that if a change is made to the legal definition of what is "good/moral" vs "evil/immoral", then <i>reality will conform</i> or otherwise adjust itself such to maintain some sort of "balance".
You see this at the core of many political and arguments: baning abortions "obvious" stops people from having sex, restricting drugs "obviously" causes people to stop using them, so banning copying and restricting the legal (meaning "moral") methods of use to a DRM scheme "obviously" prevents people from viewing that data for free.
Unfortunately, this suggests that it will be very difficult to convince anybody to reverse these beliefs, because it would require them to accept that some particular type of justice is not an inherent property of nature.
TL;DR - It is way too common for people to believe that because [they think] reality ought[2] to work in a particular way, they end up blind to what reality actually is.
There is a strong belief in what is considered "right"; despite evidence to the contrary, "the system" is still very much in favour of enforcing an unenforcible law.
In other words, it is demonstrably true that some would pay for Downton Abbey Season 5 if it were available for them to do so in their country, but it's not, so they torrent it to keep up with their friends in other countries. By the time it comes out where they live, they won't need to pay for it anymore.
A significant amount of TV and movie piracy would be eradicated if media conglomerates and film studios realized they had a global audience, and released content globally as opposed to clinging on to some now artificial segmented distribution model.
In the past, a movie studio only made a given number of reels, so movies had to release piecemeal; likewise it took time for the cargo ship to move the physical books to various places around the world, in our digital connected age these things are no longer true, but the foundation of media distribution models remain the same.
Is he not going on about data and not information, given data is not interpreted and information in interpreted data into meaningfulness. Hence DRM data bits are data and not until the DRM is removed do they become information.
He didn't make up the phrase "information wants to be free," it's something that was said a lot when mp3 piracy first took off in earnest. Even if the literal meaning is quite more general, when someone writes this chances are they mean it in connection to media and DRM.
data and information is synonymous, isn't it? Of course, DRM data is not the information in which we are interested in the end.
DRM is a format, if you will. DRM data is what's formated in the format, retreival of data in a format is information. Information, like they say about security, is a process.
As Larry Wall said way back in 1997: "I do not fundamentally believe that information wants to be free. Rather, I believe that information wants to be valuable."
"On the one hand information wants to be expensive, because it's so valuable. The right information in the right place just changes your life. On the other hand, information wants to be free, because the cost of getting it out is getting lower and lower all the time. So you have these two fighting against each other"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information_wants_to_be_free
These two contentious forces need to find an equilibrium so that as consumers we get quality information.