8 ms·

Cory Doctorow: Information Doesn’t Want to Be Free

141 points by calvin_c 12y ago

mc32 12y ago
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" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information_wants_to_be_free 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.
- sliverstorm 12y ago
  Right up there in the annals of misquotes with: They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety. Often mangled to something like: Those that would give up freedom deserve neither freedom nor safety Often used in response to people who are willing to give up the freedom to own heavy military ordinance, and the like. http://www.lawfareblog.com/2011/07/what-ben-franklin-really-said/ http://www.lawfareblog.com/2011/07/what-ben-franklin-really-...
  - the_ancient 12y ago
    WTF does gun control have to do with this topic?
    - hellbanner 12y ago
      Guns are just physical information
      - krapp 12y ago
        Only in the sense that all matter in the universe can be defined as "physical information."
    - sliverstorm 12y ago
      Nothing, I was sharing another abused misquote. It seemed in the spirit.
      - the_ancient 12y ago
        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.
    - rmc 12y ago
      USAians do love their guns.
      - deciplex 12y ago
        'USAian' isn't a word. Deal with it.
      - anonbanker 12y ago
        expat living in canada. NRA lifetime member. left a small cache of weapons with friends and family when I moved. I miss my guns.
  - XorNot 12y ago
    Also that he uses the term 'essential' there. I'll bet he wasn't thinking its essential people be allowed to yell fire in a crowded theater.
    - alexbecker 12y ago
      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).
      - XorNot 12y ago
        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).
        alexbecker 12y ago
        (Obligatory IANAL) 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.
    - 12y ago
bo1024 12y ago
Interesting article, but hard to tell where it was going. Turned out to be about how DRM is a bad idea. I'm not sure what the title has to do with the article though....
- IvyMike 12y ago
  This is an excerpt from his new book; the article headline is the book's title. I agree this is not a good title for this excerpt. Later his argument goes "Information doesn't want to be free--people do" and this story is just one bit of supporting evidence.
  - Zenst 12y ago
    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.
    - vegedor 12y ago
      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.
    - foobarian 12y ago
      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.
- fifthesteight 12y ago
  Mr. Doctorow is why I stopped reading BoingBoing. If you are familiar with his work this is not a-typical.
jordanpg 12y ago
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. [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7751110 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7751110
- wpietri 12y ago
  > are the publishers just ignorant of that? 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.
  - Steko 12y ago
    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.
justcommenting 12y ago
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.
- chasing 12y ago
  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.
  - wpietri 12y ago
    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.
christianbryant 12y ago
And then, there is also Jaron Lanier: http://www.theverge.com/2013/1/23/3899518/information-wants-to-be-free-world-world-isnt-ready http://www.theverge.com/2013/1/23/3899518/information-wants-...
time_is_scary 12y ago
here is an MP3 link of a talk he gave that summarizes the thesis of this book pretty nicely (26 minutes): http://dconstruct.s3.amazonaws.com/2014/podcast/dconstruct2014-cory-doctorow.mp3 http://dconstruct.s3.amazonaws.com/2014/podcast/dconstruct20...
harry8 12y ago
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2014/10/adobe-spyware-reveals-again-price-drm-your-privacy-and-security https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2014/10/adobe-spyware-reveals-... 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.
- spacefight 12y ago
  The more I read about always-on devices such as some DRM-infested e-readers, smart tvs, the more ideas for privacy focused startups. Tons of them...
gpvos 12y ago
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."

141 points by calvin_c 12y ago

mc32 12y ago

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" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information_wants_to_be_free 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.

sliverstorm 12y ago
Right up there in the annals of misquotes with: They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety. Often mangled to something like: Those that would give up freedom deserve neither freedom nor safety Often used in response to people who are willing to give up the freedom to own heavy military ordinance, and the like. http://www.lawfareblog.com/2011/07/what-ben-franklin-really-said/ http://www.lawfareblog.com/2011/07/what-ben-franklin-really-...
- the_ancient 12y ago
  WTF does gun control have to do with this topic?
  - hellbanner 12y ago
    Guns are just physical information
    - krapp 12y ago
      Only in the sense that all matter in the universe can be defined as "physical information."
  - sliverstorm 12y ago
    Nothing, I was sharing another abused misquote. It seemed in the spirit.
    - the_ancient 12y ago
      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.
  - rmc 12y ago
    USAians do love their guns.
    - deciplex 12y ago
      'USAian' isn't a word. Deal with it.
    - anonbanker 12y ago
      expat living in canada. NRA lifetime member. left a small cache of weapons with friends and family when I moved. I miss my guns.
- XorNot 12y ago
  Also that he uses the term 'essential' there. I'll bet he wasn't thinking its essential people be allowed to yell fire in a crowded theater.
  - alexbecker 12y ago
    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).
    - XorNot 12y ago
      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).
      - alexbecker 12y ago
        (Obligatory IANAL) 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.
  - 12y ago

bo1024 12y ago

Interesting article, but hard to tell where it was going. Turned out to be about how DRM is a bad idea. I'm not sure what the title has to do with the article though....

IvyMike 12y ago
This is an excerpt from his new book; the article headline is the book's title. I agree this is not a good title for this excerpt. Later his argument goes "Information doesn't want to be free--people do" and this story is just one bit of supporting evidence.
- Zenst 12y ago
  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.
  - vegedor 12y ago
    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.
  - foobarian 12y ago
    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.
fifthesteight 12y ago
Mr. Doctorow is why I stopped reading BoingBoing. If you are familiar with his work this is not a-typical.

jordanpg 12y ago

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. [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7751110 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7751110

wpietri 12y ago
> are the publishers just ignorant of that? 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.
- Steko 12y ago
  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.

justcommenting 12y ago

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.

chasing 12y ago
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.
- wpietri 12y ago
  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.

christianbryant 12y ago

And then, there is also Jaron Lanier: http://www.theverge.com/2013/1/23/3899518/information-wants-to-be-free-world-world-isnt-ready http://www.theverge.com/2013/1/23/3899518/information-wants-...

time_is_scary 12y ago

here is an MP3 link of a talk he gave that summarizes the thesis of this book pretty nicely (26 minutes): http://dconstruct.s3.amazonaws.com/2014/podcast/dconstruct2014-cory-doctorow.mp3 http://dconstruct.s3.amazonaws.com/2014/podcast/dconstruct20...

harry8 12y ago

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2014/10/adobe-spyware-reveals-again-price-drm-your-privacy-and-security https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2014/10/adobe-spyware-reveals-... 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.

spacefight 12y ago
The more I read about always-on devices such as some DRM-infested e-readers, smart tvs, the more ideas for privacy focused startups. Tons of them...

gpvos 12y ago

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."