Introduction
Information is rapidly becoming society's most valued commodity.
Capitalism is spreading like a thick layer of cream cheese on the earth, and capitalism distributes scarce commodities to those that value them the most.
Common sense indicates that these realities can coexist with little impact on one another. Information is not only not scarce, but it reproduces, multiplies, amplifies and refines unchecked in our minds. Society depends on the effects of endless information to progress. The benefits of the scientific method are a shining example of the necessity for ideas to be shared among people, improving upon thought and discoveries, and using them to form the bases for new ideas. The right to learn is a natural right.
The freedom of ideas is supported in kind by the active encouragement of a free market capitalist economy. The US govermnent uses its regulatory power (as do the individual states) to prevent businesses from restricting the marketplace of ideas. Capitalist monopolies generally act contrary to the public good, stifling the marketplace of ideas through their economic or political clout. Information monopolies are not natural monoplies. They are regulated to encourage the ideas to flow freely despite their market power. This regulation keeps the economy and the society healthy; it prevents economic and intellectual stagnation.
Don't just take my word for it.
It doesn't take a scientist or novelist to imagine what would becomes of a capitalist society in which information is excessively scarce (though many have). Scarce information plays by the same rules as any scarce commodity, it goes to the highest bidder. Plainly, society may not crumble, but it would certainly become very dumb and become ripe for extinction, hostile takeover or revolution. Not a pretty notion.
Intellectual Property
Americans have been granted, through the varied intellectual property laws and rulings, limited, but exclusive rights to control the reproduction and distribution of their intellectual property. Society at large depends on the "limited" portion of the previous sentence for its intellectual well-being, while IP owners cling to the "exclusive" part as incentive to produce their product. The intellectual health of society rests on the appropriate balance between those two, because "too limited" doesn't encourage thought, while "too exclusive" actively discourages it.
Recently, copyright holders have realized that with the advent of digital information storage came the potential for a fine-grained control of every use of their IP. Selling you a book or audio recording, and granting you the use of it forever does not match the income potential of licensing you a copy of a book or audio recording and controlling your use of that copy for as long as you posses it.
Truthfully, this is not a novel idea. It has been tried before.
Explore the links below, and see for youself how we all benefit from a liberated flow of information.
Many thanks to the authors and contributors who made this archive possible. The OpenLaw forum participants, in particular, helped greatly in producing the FAQ and such a volume of interesting and valuable email and educating me enough to take on this project.