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

[Seth Johnson]

-----Original Message-----
From: Chris Croughton <address@hidden>
> 
> > 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...


The cost of acquisition or production of information has no bearing on 
the intrinsic freedom of information.

I don't have to repeat the standard distinction about what "free" 
means, on a list of people I presume to be cognizant of the principles 
undergirding free software.


> (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!)


Information is free.

That's why there's so much effort spent on controlling it.

What you mean is that some information should be guarded and protected 
because of its nature, because once it's "out there," it's free.

Seth Johnson