Human cultural views evolved in a world in which only physical objects existed...
TerraHertz, while I like to agree with you and I like the idea of information being free, but I don't yet buy all the arguments. I wish we can come up with an argument that can stand for I would like to see all information free.
This is an example of holes in the logic and is what I found difficult to close the loop on:
1. Karajan conducted the Berlin Philharmonic. No one would argue that you need to pay to get in the hall to see their performance.
Correct. The hall is a physical thing, can't be reproduced, can realistically be owned, so you have to pay to get in.
2. Karajan recorded the same piece in a studio, made a recording and sold the vinyl record. No one would argue they need to pay for the little piece of vinyl disc. 2b. If someone transferred the content to a cassette tape and sell it, one would not argue that such action is illegal. (agree so far?)
3. Karajan and that same recording company decided to clean the tape up, digitize it and sell the CD, no one argued you need to pay for the CD. 3b. If someone transferred the content to a cassette tape and sell it, one would not argue that such action is illegal. (agree so far?)
Partly. The CD and tapes are physical things. If you want them, you have to pay the producer. But once you have them (especially the CD with its digital information) there's NO WAY anyone can prevent you making copies of the information if you wish. Also any means to prevent you giving away copies involve massively intrusive social control.
The physical things are not the same as the information.
4. Now the same CD is digitized differently into MP3 for it should be free? If so, should I be able to package the free stuff and make a business? Red Hat packaged Linux, but that was free by owner's choice. Let say Karajan is still alive and he doesn't want to give it away, should he have a say? What rights would Karajan has?
Your problem is you are confusing wishful thinking with moral/logical argument. You'd like to think Karajan should be able to get income from nth-degree transfers of the information he created. But I'm saying that it's fundamentally impossible for him to achieve that. And all attempts to socially enforce that are doomed to failure, and can only harm society in trying.
The only thing we can realistically do, is invent a social scheme in which it is admitted that information cannot be owned, and try to adapt to the consequences in a productive manner. For instance Karajan could (like many artists) make his work freely available, with a request for donations from those who like his work. He may not get rich this way, but at least it's not trying to fight the fundamental nature of the Universe.
4b. Now the same CD is digitized differently into MP3 for a download purchase. Say I downloaded it for $x, should I be free to "pass it along"? What is Karajan's right if I am free to pass it along (or not).
Because you insist that _some_ information can be owned, you're tying yourself up trying to define hard boundaries on a scale that has no delineations. It's all information, once it exists in perfect digital form it's futile attempting to split hairs and say this one is free, this other one is not. Incidentally,
http://everist.org/texts/Fermis_Urbex_Paradox.htmLastly, everything is really just information. Mass is energy. Matter is but specific arrangement of particles which is nothing but pure energy - it is how we arrange it that makes it what it is. And how we arrange it is just pure information.
Perhaps we may one day have technology that allows us to treat physical matter in the same way as information. But we do not yet, and some factors (Uncertainty Principle etc) suggest it may not be possible. Till it is, we are logically sound to treat matter and information as fundamentally different things. While they are still different my point stands: material things can be owned (because they take effort to produce, can't be copied, and occupy distinct physical locations) and information cannot be owned.
All arguments that information _can_ be owned ultimately reduce to wishful thinking. Along the lines "X put effort into creating this information, so X _deserves_ to be paid for it!"
I'm not arguing about the 'deserve'' part. I'm saying it's fundamentally impossible to enforce the actual payment. So it's better to just get over it, and find some workaround in which there's no attempt to enforce the unenforceable.
We eradicated polio (I think I got the right virus), and we have the info on the genome. That once physical and once a life form is now just 1's and 0's. Even we are all merely 1's and 0's. A very long and ever string of 1's and 0's but a string of 1's and 0's none the less.
Actually the concept is that any information set is just a single integer on the number plane. What base you write it in is immaterial.
I'd expect some entity does claim to own the code of the polio virus. Certainly some labs do still retain samples of the actual virus. I recall a debate about whether they should destroy the samples, but can't recall the outcome. Not important anyway, since I'd wager someone would chose to keep some regardless of the decision.
Someone can own the physical samples. But the genome data - it's information. Can't be owned. It can only be possessed and only kept by secrecy.
So, can anything be owned at all?
Your claim that matter and energy are identical things is not valid in a practical sense, only in the E=MC^2 sense.
So yes, physical objects can be owned,
information cannot be owned.
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