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Isn’t the point here that it was the path the free information ideology inadvertently produced: (free) information served with ads (because everyone needs butte

Isn’t the point here that it was the path the free information ideology inadvertently produced: (free) information served with ads (because everyone needs butter on the bread)? And because of that ingrained ideology, it’s still difficult to charge for the actual information product? Edit: missing word

shantly 7y ago
That ideology had nothing to do with the use of spying coupled with advertising ("targeted ads" in their modern sense) causing the creation of rents-seeking monopolies in the online ads space. The tech that enabled that was really just a few things (Javascript that could make and modify requests while also being able to hook into various user-generated events being a huge one, though not the only one) and I don't think many or any of those were developed for the purposes of information freedom or whatever, in particular. And anyway "information wants to be free" is more descriptive than it is ideological. It's a statement about what tends to happen to information. Cheap Internet access and cheap storage have changed how that works so much that it's qualitatively different from the previous status quo ("the medium is the message") but the tech creating that would've probably looked pretty similar regardless of whether the inventors thought it was wrong to pay for information (which I doubt most did anyway). [EDIT] TL;DR: "information wants to be free" isn't a statement about the ethics of charging money for information, and the reasons that advertising won on the web and the reasons monopolies took those over rather than even small or midsized publications being able to continue getting by with their own ad sales desk wouldn't have anything to do with anyone subscribing to that notion anyway. It's an entirely incorrect association.
- mirimir 7y ago
  Right. Ads don't generate substantial income for the book authors. And TFA actually complains about that, as the context for bringing up the supposed flow from "information wants to be free" to ads. But now that I think of it, ads do reflect the fact that "information wants to be free". But in this case, it's information about users, which gets monetized through behavioral advertising markets.
  - shantly 7y ago
    Yeah my point is just that 1) "information wants to be free" is an observation more than a statement of purpose, and 2) I don't think fighting against dirty ol' authors who are trying to charge for their work was on anyone's mind, more or less, when designing the technologies under the modern Web. The way things shook out was some combination of an accident and inevitable. I doubt many or any of them thought charging money for, say, books or magazines was a bad thing. That's just... not what any of this is about. Even if the Free Software movement (which I think is what she's trying to get at?) sometimes bleeds over into other areas, its ideological roots are in retaining user control of software in particular because software's a tool, not keeping people from charging money for novels or history books or newspaper articles or whatever. [EDIT] that is, actual ideological informational-freedom anarchists—that is, not just opportunistic pirates—are rare and aren't and have never been in power to any substantial degree, even in the software world. The whole premise of that part is a big misunderstanding.
    - mirimir 7y ago
      Well, as an old-school "ideological informational-freedom anarchist", "information wants to be free" for me was always mostly about the Internet as a workaround against censorship, and domination via propaganda.
      - BookPost 7y ago
        Book Post here! If you listen to the Lanier interview, or read his recent books, he spells out the connection between free internet and the advertising model. I’m not a tech person, but it was my experience that in the 90s there was very little support for building revenue models into how people receive digital information. Those who were betting on the digital economy and building the monopolies we have now understood that their earnings would come from monetizing user information. “Advertising” is a shorthand for this. If fighting against authors wasn’t on people’s mind when they were building the web, they weren’t thinking ahead. The outcome has been that there is no solid mechanism hitching revenue to those who generate intellectual property.

shantly 7y ago

That ideology had nothing to do with the use of spying coupled with advertising ("targeted ads" in their modern sense) causing the creation of rents-seeking monopolies in the online ads space. The tech that enabled that was really just a few things (Javascript that could make and modify requests while also being able to hook into various user-generated events being a huge one, though not the only one) and I don't think many or any of those were developed for the purposes of information freedom or whatever, in particular. And anyway "information wants to be free" is more descriptive than it is ideological. It's a statement about what tends to happen to information. Cheap Internet access and cheap storage have changed how that works so much that it's qualitatively different from the previous status quo ("the medium is the message") but the tech creating that would've probably looked pretty similar regardless of whether the inventors thought it was wrong to pay for information (which I doubt most did anyway). [EDIT] TL;DR: "information wants to be free" isn't a statement about the ethics of charging money for information, and the reasons that advertising won on the web and the reasons monopolies took those over rather than even small or midsized publications being able to continue getting by with their own ad sales desk wouldn't have anything to do with anyone subscribing to that notion anyway. It's an entirely incorrect association.

mirimir 7y ago
Right. Ads don't generate substantial income for the book authors. And TFA actually complains about that, as the context for bringing up the supposed flow from "information wants to be free" to ads. But now that I think of it, ads do reflect the fact that "information wants to be free". But in this case, it's information about users, which gets monetized through behavioral advertising markets.
- shantly 7y ago
  Yeah my point is just that 1) "information wants to be free" is an observation more than a statement of purpose, and 2) I don't think fighting against dirty ol' authors who are trying to charge for their work was on anyone's mind, more or less, when designing the technologies under the modern Web. The way things shook out was some combination of an accident and inevitable. I doubt many or any of them thought charging money for, say, books or magazines was a bad thing. That's just... not what any of this is about. Even if the Free Software movement (which I think is what she's trying to get at?) sometimes bleeds over into other areas, its ideological roots are in retaining user control of software in particular because software's a tool, not keeping people from charging money for novels or history books or newspaper articles or whatever. [EDIT] that is, actual ideological informational-freedom anarchists—that is, not just opportunistic pirates—are rare and aren't and have never been in power to any substantial degree, even in the software world. The whole premise of that part is a big misunderstanding.
  - mirimir 7y ago
    Well, as an old-school "ideological informational-freedom anarchist", "information wants to be free" for me was always mostly about the Internet as a workaround against censorship, and domination via propaganda.
    - BookPost 7y ago
      Book Post here! If you listen to the Lanier interview, or read his recent books, he spells out the connection between free internet and the advertising model. I’m not a tech person, but it was my experience that in the 90s there was very little support for building revenue models into how people receive digital information. Those who were betting on the digital economy and building the monopolies we have now understood that their earnings would come from monetizing user information. “Advertising” is a shorthand for this. If fighting against authors wasn’t on people’s mind when they were building the web, they weren’t thinking ahead. The outcome has been that there is no solid mechanism hitching revenue to those who generate intellectual property.