To me, it's not so much an issue of "information wants to be free" as it is "information wants to be put to productive use." In this case, the university had da

To me, it's not so much an issue of "information wants to be free" as it is "information wants to be put to productive use." In this case, the university had data that some enterprising students found they could use to make students' lives easier. They didn't just appropriate information; they added value to information. They organized it, and channeled it toward a useful purpose. They built a better Bluebook. Yale can decide how the information is used. But if someone within the Yale community comes up with a Yale-beneficial use for the information, Yale should embrace that use. I don't think this was a free-speech issue, so much as a missing-the-boat issue. Yale should be nurturing its hackers. Yale has an excellent CS program (I say this as a Yale alumnus), but in recent decades, it's not been much of a countercultural or hackerish place to be. Yale is top-notch at producing lawyers and investment bankers. It needs to get better at producing hackers. (By many recent accounts, it's starting to get considerably better. Maybe this episode will inspire a rethinking of sorts.)