While I'm harping on this, I should say that the textbook definition of "commodity fetishism" absolutely and totally applies to the aphorism "information wants to be free" It's the exact equivalent of saying shit like "wages want to be low"
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And, fun fact, the original version of "information wants to be free" was Stewart Brand *pairing* it with "information wants to be expensive"
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(Much like everyone forgets that von Clausewitz paired "War is diplomacy continued by other means" with "War is a fistfight continued by other means", i.e. war is fought for BOTH high-minded and petty reasons)
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But yeah, "information wants to be free" and its price trends down to zero if you just "let it" Just like wages want to be low, rent wants to rise and jobs want to have high turnover and be entry-level
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Information also wants to be expensive, it's fickle like that, the ways it expresses displeasure with being made free are just delayed You give information freedom by plastering it all over social media with no attribution/compensation, and it starts lying to you all the time
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Information wants to be free and it also wants to be worthless Those are the same market force People demanding *good* information and constructing a whole economy around gatekeeping, curation, etc is "information wanting to be expensive" That hasn't changed
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Good information is as costly as it ever was, the only shift is in who gets paid, and the people now getting paid the most are the assholes who have the least to do with it
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At most, the statement of information wanting to be free is that it's dramatically more difficult to keep it under control. Which is a destructive interpretation.
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I think it's basically impossible to keep under control without compromising on very important aspects of how technology relates to end-users. It's a very bad idea in general for technology to answer to tech and media companies over its "owners."
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If I may steelman that just a bit, the argument is that the marginal cost of sharing information is zero, which is what markets (the perfect, idealized, econ-101 version of them) tend to set prices to. Which is a /problem/ that IP law is trying to /fix/.
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I happen to think that IP law is a /bad/ fix, but "ignore the problem" isn't an option, and meanwhile people are reliant on the current solution and you don't get to just tell them to fuck off because they shouldn't have expected an institution you don't like to function.
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