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Comment by rada | Hacker News Reader

I am surprised to see someone on hacker news saying that information should not be free.

Using the word "information" in this context is rather disingenuous. We don't play music on our information players, we don't buy books at the local information store, and we don't see movies at the information theater. If we are going to have a good discussion, let's call things what they are.

It seems ridiculous that we should ignore the power of the internet for content distribution forever because it doesn't pay the bills now.

Fiat money is ridiculous in exactly the same way. Would you say that it seems ridiculous to ignore the power of Xerox because it doesn't pay the bills for sellers of physical goods?

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Well what do you use to view information? You don't look at it on an information screen and you don't store in on an information drive. You are just arguing Symantec. If you have a book the physical object is the book and what is written on the pages is information. Information is different from an object in that it is intangible, it is the part that gets copied when people torrent something.

Fiat money is ridiculous in exactly the same way. Would you say that it seems ridiculous to ignore the power of Xerox because it doesn't pay the bills for sellers of physical goods?

That makes no sense. I don't see what you mean. Right now the internet could deliver content to more people more efficiently than a retail store but it is being restricted by laws that have been put in place to guarantee a paycheck for the content creators. I don't think that this is bad but I do think that we are in a state of transition and that in the not so distant future you will not go to a store to get music movies or books (except possibly as a novelty)

Kind of like a hotel is a physical object but your stay in it is intangible so once you forge the key you are entitled in staying for free? Or kind of like McDonald's brand name is intangible so anyone can open a shack and call it McDonalds without paying a franchise fee?

Seriously, you can make up esoteric arguments ad infinitum and ad absurdum but the fact is, an arbitrary distinction - digital vs. printed - does not a theft unmake. Information wants to be free but books, movies and songs want to sell, or we wouldn't be having this argument.

One last interesting thing for you to ponder: the entire fiction genre is, by definition, misinformation.

I said that information is intangible, not that all intangible things are information.

You are being absurd. A physical book and a digital representation of the information are completely different. The only thing that they have in common is that once used you get the same information. If you steal a book, that is theft. If you copy a book that is copyright infringement. The difference is that the person who had the book stolen from then is deprived of property in one example and in the other they are not.

This is not a simple matter. Making a copy is not theft. There are not clear lines here.

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