Information should be free, right? We should be able to have access to all sorts of accumulated human knowledge because it benefits us as a society to have more educated people. It’s a pretty solid concept, but there’s one problem: defining information.
The Great Napster Lawsuit of 2000 and the more recent Pirate Bay Keelhauling of 2009 only scratched the surface of the true issue that has been boiling under the surface of modern culture for almost 100 years: is entertainment information, and if so, is it exempt from the rules of other information?
It wasn’t always this complicated; musicians and other artists were commissioned by the gentry to paint, write plays, create music, sculpt, tell stories and so on, most often about the employers themselves. Much of it was work-for-hire, with the final result becoming the property of the paying party. Occasionally, popular songs would be played by musicians at social gatherings, but there was no talk of royalties, percentage ownership, commissions or digital sales revenue.
But when the ability to record (and better preserve) entertainment was finally an option, something happened: celebrities.
Now, people all over the world could hear the same version of the same song, see the same movie and read the same book. Shared experiences began sprouting in earnest, and trading cultural information became easier. And those who provided the information (and entertainment) found themselves receiving more money and recognition than their forebears had ever dreamed.
But in order to properly recognize individuals’ contributions, laws and organizations were established to govern the flow (both cash and hard goods) of entertainment. Similarly, when the Internet came into widespread use, new legislation and oversight had to be created to manage the information that people could find online. Which is the can of worms that we’re now looking at.
Both Google and Wikipedia provide an unbelievably large store of cumulative knowledge, but consider this: most of the information contained on these sites used to be found in books, many of which required purchase. Alternately, TV shows are now being sold on DVD, despite originating as a free (minus potential cable subscriptions) piece of entertainment. So will the Internet (which already has service costs) develop anti-net neutrality practices and wind up more payment-based than it currently is?
Look at the blog model. Most bloggers offer access to their sites (and the information contained within) for free. Visitors can pop over to learn about any number of things from any number of websites. The information is free and accessible. But who pays for it? Someone had to study and experiment in order to discover information on, say, body language, which cost time and money. However, they do not have exclusive rights to the data – anyone can read and use (or even teach) it. And with book reading on the decline, those who create new data and information streams can no longer rely on publishing to repay their costs.
We’re already starting to see the effect that free information is having on more traditional business models: eBook prices will rise, digital music downloads will cost more, and companies will restrict people from watching basic broadcast TV for free online. This sort of makes sense – entertainment is a very profitable (and economically invaluable) industry. But it seems that the cost of allowing entertainment (and information itself) to be cheap or free to consumers is getting too costly.
So enjoy access to the world wide web and all of the wonderful content that it holds. While you can.
