Re: [Fsfe-uk] Trying to pull a fast one in the Office

[Chris Croughton]

On Sat, Nov 01, 2003 at 11:48:35PM -0500, Seth Johnson wrote:

> Paul Mobbs wrote:
> > 
> > The new version of Office includes a new feature called 'information
> > rights management', designed to fix this.
> 
> This is supremely perverse.  Nobody has any rights to information.
> Period.  You just get exclusive rights to original expression.

No one has any right to access of information, certainly, it can be
barred by anyone.  Well, until they get out the thumbscrews and truth
drugs, anyway.

> Take them on head-on with that point.  State it bluntly: Copyright
> doesn't cover information.  Information is free.  Always has been.
> Still is.  Won't change, unless we let it.

In some ideal world, maybe.  In the Real World(tm) in which I live
information is often expensive and very hard to obtain (someone please
tell me where I can get the manuals for an Elliott 4130 computer now?),
and a vast amount is controlled very tightly.  Even finding someone's
phone number costs the best part of a pound (if it isn't ex-directory).
There are whole government departments which spend vast amounts of money
(and in many cases lives) trying to obtain information.  There are
research labs spending vast amounts to extract a few more bits of
information about the universe.

Most information never has been 'free', in any sense.  It has very often
been used as a commodity, and those who distribute it freely have in many
cases been hung or shot as traitors or spies...

(You are right, however, that copyright doesn't cover information.
Information is partially covered by patents, more by custom (plagiarism
accusations, for instance.  Most of it is covered by "I won't tell you
(unless you pay me a lot)" or by the sheer difficulty of obtaining it.)

Even if you mean "information /should/ be free", I'll disagree with it
as an absolute.  Would you make military information 'free' to your
country's enemies?  Would you want anyone with the desire to be able to
find out anything about you that they wanted?  (For a start, please tell
me your bank account details and passwords!)

Chris C