The Information Society

Information is free!
The only question is:
are you?

... "Incentives" is merely a metaphor, and as a metaphor to describe human creative activity it's pretty crummy. I have said this before, but the better metaphor arose on the day Michael Faraday first noticed what happened when he wrapped a coil of wire around a magnet and spun the magnet. Current flows in such a wire, but we don't ask what the incentive is for the electrons to leave home. ... Moglen's Metaphorical Corollary to Faraday's Law says that if you wrap the Internet around every person on the planet and spin the planet, software flows in the network. It's an emergent property of connected human minds that they create things for one another's pleasure and to conquer their uneasy sense of being too alone.

Your mind is made of chemicals and ideas. I strongly believe we all have a fundamental human right to think whatever thoughts we please. The current efforts by government and industry to prevent copying of software (in all its forms) will be the next war on drugs. The battleground is the same: your mind!

I believe the copyright and patent systems are harmful to society. Neither in practice nor in theory do they do the Right Thing. This web page explains why I believe this, and what we can do to rectify the situation.

I consider this an ultimate and utopian goal. Public policy today and how we should change it tomorrow is a different story. We may disagree on how far and how fast to go, but it's more important to agree on the direction. This page is part of my nascent political manifesto.

Many people agree with these ideas and have expressed them far better than I can, so first I include links and/or mirrors of their work:

• Boldrin and Levine have a Economic and Game Theory Intellectual Property Page.
• The IP Not! Foundation has a lot of original material. The original appears to be down.
• Anarchism Triumphant: Free Software and the Death of Copyright is an article by Eben Moglen, Professor of Law & Legal History, Columbia Law School. mirror.
• Lawrence Lessig of the Stanford Law School writes prolifically on the subject.
• Prof James Boyle has written extensively about how the current system is broken and headed in the wrong direction.
• The Libertarian Case Against Intellectual Property Rights. mirror.
• GNU Philosophy by RMS himself.
• The Economy of Ideas by John Perry Barlow.
• Against Intellectual Property, by Brian Martin. mirror.
• Copy Rights? a short and informal article that makes an ethical argument. mirror.
• Liber: Free the Books Campaign mostly a link collection.
• Copyright Protection Is for Dinosaurs Stewart Alsop's column in Fortune. mirror.
• Anti-copyright page presents a musician's point of view. Like mine, this page is mostly links.
• Another anti-copyright from Peter Russell. mirror.