Information Freedom
=====================

:Author: Benjamin Mako Hill
:Contact: mako@atdot.cc
:Date: Fri, 28 Apr 2006 13:03:19 -0400

.. Note::

   This talk was given at "Come Together" organized at the Center for
   Advacned Visual Studies at MIT on April 28, 2006. The gathering
   focused on issues of social change, social responsibility, technology,
   and activism.
   
   More information on this talk my other talks is available at
   http://mako.cc/


The Problem
--------------

Artificial Scarcity and Goods With Zero Marginal Cost
*****************************************************

Eben Moglen, a professor and historian at Columbia Law School proposed
what he calls the great ethical question of the twenty-first century
(paraphrased from his DotCommunist Manifesto and the related talk):

  If everyone can everything, everywhere, all of the time, how can it
  ever be ethically justifiable to deprive anyone of anything?

  If you could make food by pressing a button, there would be no
  ethical justification for hunger. Why is information any different?

While simple, this statement introduces a major dilemma for all goods
that are entirely knowledge, data, or expression which, unlike all
other goods before, have *zero marginal cost*.

The rapid development of information technology in the last
half-century has done *exactly this.* Each one of us has general,
flexible, adaptable, copying machines on our desks and in our
bags. They make perfect copies and allow us to transfer copies around
the world almost instantaneously.

Our economic, social, and political systems are based on natural
scarcity in goods. As information goods have become inherently and
unexceptionably abundant, we have responded by creating artificial
scarcity in these information goods through the creation of legally,
politically, technically, socially constructed monopolies (i.e.,
private property) in ideas.


Intellectual Property
**********************

Private property in ideas comes in variety of ways. Most notable
amount these are intellectual property:

* *Copyright*: Long-term (i.e., up to 100+ years) monopolies in a
  particular type of expression.

* *Patents*: Medium-term (i.e., 20 years) monopolies on an idea.

* *Trademarks*: Unlimited or "as need be" monopolies on marks used to
  keep consumers from being confused.

* Trade secrets: Secrets.

Each of these gets special and particular legal protection.

Each of these areas is expanding in scope and duration:

* Copyright lasts decades longer.

* Business methods and software is now patentable.

* DRM systems make it so that your technology no longer respects your
  wishes when those clash with the wishes of the people who created
  your computer or the content that you have put onto it.

In an unprecedented development, this protection has been merged with
global trade (e.g., agreement to IP in the TRIPS agreement is part of
joining the WTO).

The Solutions
--------------

Overview
**********

There are three major classes of methods by which people "resist"
current ownership of ideas:

1. *Alternative Approaches:* Groups to attempt to live the world now
   by creating and releasing information freely and by refusing to
   participate, either through production or consumption, in
   proprietary communities. They define essential freedom and then
   live in that world.

2. *Transgressive Approaches:* Frequently, this boils down to
   piracy. In addition to systems like Napster, this is the process
   through which the vast majority of the world produces and consumes
   content. In a sense, what is happening is that the group simply
   ignores the current exclusionary approaches to IP. Some argue that
   this will kick the legs out from under the current system in the
   process.

3. *Progressive Approaches:* These are primarily approaches that
   involve "working within the system" in one way or another. This can
   include anything from consumer campaigns to put pressure on
   recording companies to constitutional challenges to copyright
   extensions in front of the Supreme Court.

   Alternatively, progressives might aim to merely provide sets of
   tools to allow for alternatives without making calls for a set of
   essential freedoms.

Examples
*********

Alternative Approaches:

* The free and open source software movement. If you're heard of
  GNU/Linux, then you know what I'm talking about.

* The Science Commons project or Open Access journal movement.

* Arguably, some aspects or sub-groups within the Creative Commons
  movement.

Transgressive approaches:

* The way that media is consumed in the vast majority of the world.

* Napster and most up-to-date P2P technology. Getting involved is as
  simple as participating.

* Groups like the Pirate Bay which is run by a group in Sweden called
  Pirat Byran which now has a political party.

Progressive Approaches:

* Creative commons through creating licensing.

* The work of groups like the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF),
  Public Knowledge, and others who are working to put checks on the
  expansion of IP law and the "enclosure" of the public domain.