
Cory Doctorow: Information Doesn’t Want to Be Free - calvin_c
http://techcrunch.com/2014/11/09/worse-than-nothing/
======
mc32
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
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-...](http://www.lawfareblog.com/2011/07/what-ben-franklin-really-said/)

~~~
the_ancient
WTF does gun control have to do with this topic?

~~~
rmc
USAians do love their guns.

~~~
anonbanker
expat living in canada. NRA lifetime member. left a small cache of weapons
with friends and family when I moved. I miss my guns.

------
justcommenting
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
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
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.

~~~
sparkzilla
> 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).

~~~
Broken_Hippo
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.

------
harry8
[https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2014/10/adobe-spyware-
reveals-...](https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2014/10/adobe-spyware-reveals-
again-price-drm-your-privacy-and-security)

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
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...

------
jordanpg
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
> 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
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.

~~~
wpietri
> 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.

------
bo1024
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
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
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.

~~~
foobarian
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.

------
time_is_scary
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/dconstruct20...](http://dconstruct.s3.amazonaws.com/2014/podcast/dconstruct2014-cory-
doctorow.mp3)

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

------
gpvos
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."

