Re: Re: ant-piracy news

On 23/10/2013 00:16, Chris wrote:
>
> On Tue, 22 Oct 2013, Brenna Lyons wrote:
>
> > Yes, it is very profitable, but the whole "Information wants to
> > be free." is a misquote, in the first place.
>
> It's a misquote in more than one way, because the original quote
> (Steward Brand, 1984) covers much more useful ground:
>
> 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.
>
> : chris smith
>

Chris,

You and Robotech are, of course, both right in what you say about the 
actual original, which I remember as "Information wants to be free, 
information wants to be paid for".  This is, however, personification of 
a concept; this might be philosophic fun, but it ignores all the 
realities surrounding both the attitudes revealled and the nature of 
"information".

Information, by almost any definition you want to give it, is not just 
there. It takes work to make it, calculate it, make it understandable; 
the efforts involved in its origination can be prodigious; the further 
work to make it available can be too. And now we come to a question of 
the meaning of "free" in the context of the saying. It can mean without 
cost---but to those who understand what information is from a production 
end---it suggests releasing it from obscurity by hard work, often 
statistical, or research, or calculation, or 
investigation/interpretation. And often taking a great deal of time, 
effort and co-operation.

Because it also gets confused with naive concepts of a "free" internet, 
it has been turned to the idea that all intellectual work is worth 
nothing. I've written many answers to that idea in the past on this 
list, and those answers were written very vigorously. Let me just say 
that it is even worse than the vile reality of the Zero Hours Contract 
of employment [or non-employment].

Joseph Harris