It is widely discussed on the Internet that information should be free for various substantial reasons which they satisfy social, ethical and personal needs like freedom, democracy and distribution of knowledge to anyone who seeks it. If these principles are violated by imposing consumers to pay then illegal methods will be used in order to have access of information without a financial cost. In addition another important reason why information should be free is because it will increase the possibilities of developing countries to acquire knowledge and information that will be useful to overcome serious financial and social problems that are already occur.
Some people believe that information is a kind of relationship between the sender and the receiver. The actual content of information has its own value and contains certain characteristics that make it unique.” Information is a difference which makes a difference”. (Gregory Bateson). This difference exists between solid goods (e.g. books, journals) and intangible products. Information is an action that does not need space for expressing it. On the contrary physical products occupy a certain space in order to be purchased. Information can not be controlled rather it can be experienced by consumers because the process of converting it into knowledge can be done through a human mind.
Barlow (1994).
There is a major difference between what kind of information can really affect and actually change human’s life. There are two kinds of information. The one that can be “processed” which means that the consumer can not be financial or social benefited by the value of the information. On the other hand, information can also be “substance”. In this case the consumer can be directly benefited. As a consequence, user’s future will be directly affected by this kind of information. For example a lawyer may reveal information concerning legal aspects to the client, but specific information will not be revealed, that consist the base of lawyer ‘success.
What is the Charge for Quality Information
The usage of information can be evaluated in terms of its quality. The word “quality” implies that the interpretation of information by the consumer brought the desirable result. There are some factors that determine the quality and reliability of information. The most important of them are credibility, accuracy, reasonableness and support.
As Internet created many opportunities for people to express their work freely, many less professional authors are publishing their work ignoring the content and reliability of it in terms of quality. As a result many people have noticed that because trivial information circulates the Internet, free charge is inevitable.
However according to Stewart Brand people are not willing to pay for quality information. The reason is that in terms of price there is no distinction between quality and inefficient information. For example good books cost no more than bad books. A quality word processor software cost exactly the same as a less effective one. Consumer tends to pay for the quality of the source (e.g. publisher, webpage) and not for quality of information because the reliability of source makes the consumer to trust the content of the information.
“Freeware” and “Software Privacy”
There is an assumption that without freeware, Internet would not exist. The free software foundation supports that free software is a matter of freedom, not price. The consumer must have the availability to distribute, change or modify the program. Many software publishers claim that software is not a solid good or a commodity which they can sell in order to gain profit. It is a connection between the customer and the developer, extending to a common goal. From the one hand, through customer complaints and suggestions, the developer will improve the program and the consumer will receive an update of the software in order to use it more efficient. Free software implies that there is permission by the legal owner and the government to use software provided on the Internet without a financial cost. Also implies that the government permits the user to make modifications on the source code without mentioning that the program has been altered. Freedom of software also means that every individual or business is able to use any kind of software, in any kind of computer system that is available. If the owner of the software has the power or the will to impose a fee, then the software is not free. Also it is not free when the distribution of it does not concern the commercial market and the commercial use.
However, a major enemy that regulates the distribution and access of free software is the government. It constrains access on software programs by introducing laws that can not be restricted. Developers in that case, do not have the ability to deny these regulations.
According to a recent research, computer industry is losing eleven billion dollars annually from free and pirated software. Software privacy is the result of certain attempts by software developers to “break” the security of software programs, in order to be distributed with no financial cost in the market. This action is illegal and can not be characterized as an effort by people to improve and create software that can be distributed legally on the Internet. Sander (2001)
Governments though fail to prevent software piracy due to the low cost of the crime and the impossibility to prevent data copying. This is one reason, why the commercial opinion believes that free software means software piracy which obvious is different applications that result to different commercial purposes.
Many consumers are biased with the concept of free software, because they believe that through them, private information can be revealed. For example consider the scenario that a user downloads a free software program from the Internet. Sometimes in order to do this the user must provide personal information for advertising and statistical purposes. The user’s web activity can be monitored (e.g. through cookies, or server side logs) from the webpage that the free software exists. With this process all the personal information of the consumer can be easily mined. As a result free software is depreciated, and that leads to the disappearance of free software on the net.
But imagine Internet without free software. Over the half of the web sites would disappear. Many development tools (e.g. zippers, compilers, and debug programs) would not be existed leading in a total transformation of the Internet to impersonal cybernated environment.
The power of “Intellectual Property”
Internet is a popular network, linking people to a variety of sources throughout the world. Many organizations are using the Internet for marketing purposes, in order to find new customers and promote their products globally. The easy access to a vast amount of information, free of charge, has created the need to form a certain law that would protect the intellectual property of owners. This kind of law was only applicable to physical products but now it has also entered the digital environment so it has been modified in such a way that is completely adaptable to the new technologies.
According to the book “Introduction to Computer Law” “Intellectual property is the name given to legal rights which protect creative works, inventions and commercial goodwill.” Bainbridge (2000) p9. Intellectual property laws are designed to provide restriction to those who steal the effort of another’s person ideas or work. Without this kind of law, there would not be any motive for people to develop new ideas and new products.
There are some intellectual property rights that are familiar to consumers like copyright, trademarks and patents. The purpose and the scope of these rights differ but sometimes also overlap. Intellectual property, affects the trademark system, through the process of commercial branding, which combines advertising and marketing strategies. These strategies are being developed through Internet where users are extremely careful, the traders can be located, and there is no physical contact to assure that the company’s financial security will not be violated. Coult (2000)
In an online environment like Internet consumers rely on brand awareness, because the selection of a particular product is an extremely difficult process among an abundance of goods that are inferior in terms of quality. Furthermore trademarks are of a major importance concerning Internet, but are also very sensitive from violation and infringement. Trademark owners, are trying to monitor the vast amount of web pages and the free flow of information, in order to protect their intellectual property rights.
The patent system has also affected web businesses because a great amount of money has to be consumed in order to patent their financial and online business methods, which are available on the net. The Japanese Patent Office declared that “inventions which are concerned with methods or systems of doing business using computers on the Internet are being defined as “Business method Inventions””. Patents have mainly been introduced for online credit cards and for a system in order to sustain privacy on a computerized network.
Intellectual property laws had to be extended, mainly because of the interpretation of consumers, that information along with intellectual property should be free of charge. For that reason intellectual creators are searching certain ways of releasing their products online without risking the output of their effort which is the financial reward.
However many consumers are against to the formation of certain laws that will constrain the availability of ideas free of charge. The appearance of Intellectual Property on digital environment has created a major problem. The specific type of property that is familiar to the majority of people is physical objects. Consumers may posses land, food or clothes, but owning ideas is something different. The way that ideas are expressed is totally irrelevant as far as it concerns the ownership of physical products. The majority of physical products can be used by one person at a time. On the contrary, information that contains ideas can be copied several times, but the owner who has the original, has also the full use of it. Intellectual Property on the Internet is an attempt to create information scarcity in order to give rewards to the owners, and to restrict the access of information to the many. As a result Intellectual Property promotes inequality. It creates competitiveness over ideas. As “Peter Drahos” mention to the book “Global Intellectual Property Rights” “Intellectual Property is a form of private sovereignty over primary good information”.
The supporters of Intellectual property, promotes the idea that technological innovation acts as the basis for the Intellectual Property System. The protection of information and the protection of technological products is the objective of intellectual property law. However in terms of technological innovation, information is becoming valuable only when new information is being added. Consequently, if patents raise the cost of information in the digital environment, the innovative process is decelerating.
Certain people believe that the basic argument for Intellectual Property is that ownership affects the production of new ideas and new information, because of financial motivation. These financial benefits can be available from the Internet where there is a surplus of ideas. As a result government extends the existing Intellectual Laws in order for the publishers, organizations and creators to be financial benefited not only from the physical goods but also from the expression of ideas that is circulated through Internet.
Is Information a “Commodity?”
The majority of the Economic Theories treat information as a commodity. There is a fundamental argument by the author of the book “The global Information Society” that if information actually is a commodity, automatically means that it is a consumption good that has to be paid in order to own it. In order for information to take the form of a commodity, firstly it has to produce a return on investments and to price it in terms of the consumer value and not according to a specific production cost. In addition information must be protected by legal ownership rights in order to be defined as a commodity. Without ownership, information can possess a value but it can not obtain a price. However because information can be often copied and reproduced at a low cost and at the same time the cost of transmission can be at a minimal cost, it is difficult for information to be appropriated in terms of price. But from the other hand appropriation is one of the basic aspects of a commodity.
In the book “who owns the media” Harvard Benjamin Compaine, makes an analysis of the economics of broadcasting implying that information is a public good. “A marginal cost to an economist is one which has essentially no marginal cost associated with adding distribution.” That is a major difference between public and private goods. Every physical product has a price that exceeds marginal cost. In digital environment, information is actually the public good and whether it is being used by one entity or many, the marginal cost stays the same. As a result there is no expense for the creator or the owner of the information for producing extra copies for the additional consumers that want to have access to the particular information.
Public good means that information is available to many people at the same time, and the availability of it to an individual can not restrict the access of information to the others. There is a basic problem concerning the allocation of a “standard” that could measure information. Although some products which contain information like mass storage devices, Digital Versatile Disks or software programs have been defined as commodities, their price is based upon the value of information they contain. As a result consumers are not paying the mean by which information is carried out (e.g. the compact disc) but the public good which is in the private good. This has led to major arguments among the economic analysts that are trying to appoint information as a commodity.
Role of the State: Data Protection.
Personal data protection is an issue that is being discussed extensively even before the evolution of the digital environment. A large amount of data is being gathered from the government for legitimate purposes. This data includes information about an individual age, nationality, personal income or even place of residence. These data are being collected for certain purposes like the right to vote or for collection of taxes. In other words government gathers information which is needed to assure that the citizens are responsible with their obligations towards the state, but also to provide them their privileges. In nowadays there is no government that could operate efficient without the possession of this kind of information. When personal computers were introduced, the process of collecting, sorting and using data has changed, but the purpose of protecting personal information remained the same.
However it is not only the state, which process information about citizens. A large amount is also held by other public bodies. Also regional governments may have access to some information that is held by the main government. For example in Britain, information about property value is held by local authorities. This information is fundamental in order to calculate, the tax obligations of citizens and property owners. However information is also held by Universities, hospitals, schools which are not belong to the government sector.
The appearance of computers raised some major concerns for several reasons. On the one hand computers can store and sort data faster than a human or a manual system. The new dimensions that computers brought in terms of retrieval and processing of raw data is the actual power of the state over the citizens. From the other hand, data can be electronically distributed, without human interaction; it can also be processed and exchanged between databases and agencies. That means that is possible for a user to compare data that is closely connected with social security payments, personal income statements and income taxes by combining these particular data with information that is held in different government departments. In order to prevent the access of users that hold information, the government has restricted the ways in which information can be distributed stored or collected.
The book “Government and Information” refers to the fact that most countries have developed data protection legislations in order to constrain the freedom of accessing personal data. In 1984 Britain joined the Data Protection Act, but in comparison to other countries, Britain delayed to be a part of this Act. Since 1970’s the data protection issue was a big concern, in the Commission of the European Community, UNESCO, and the Council of Europe. Information should only be used for the purpose it is collected and the subject of it, should be relevant and accurate. These fundamental principles now seem to be in common to the majority of the industrialized countries.
However when these laws are not used in theory but in practice, are inefficient. The reason is that there will always be a suspicion because of the nature of this subject. British law obliges all database owners who include personal data about individuals to register with an agency, the Data Protection Registry, which is established for that particular purpose. In a registered database, where information is included, there is an assurance that the content of the information is accurate, up-to-date and without mistakes. But most of them are designed for the protection of the state rather for the protection of the individual. The meaning and the purpose of data protection is for the benefit of the individuals and not for the state thus the registered holders must use it only for the specific purpose that it was gathered, and not for spreading it to unauthorized people.[Secrecy or the Right to Know (1980) p. 12-20]
Freedom of Information: A social Threat for the State
There is still no answer to the question of whether information should be free and if it is able to fit into the existing patterns and existing laws. And from the other hand if the social behavior is ready to adopt new principles that will adjust, in order to fit in the new technologies. Of course the supporters of the idea, that information should be free believe that such a change will lead to the liberation of ideas and thoughts which will provide a major assistance to the humanity in order to progress. But the protection of personal information, must be secured because it can only add value when it is considered, that the citizen derives benefits from the information that is received. Intellectual Property laws must be formed in a way that will protect the creativity and ownership rights, but will also be flexible enough to allow the access of information without a legal cost. The government has an obligation towards the citizens to protect them against the violation of stored information, and also has to ensure that the citizens know their rights about requesting from public authorities to handle any personal information they possess, while at the same time to protect their personal privacy.
The chaotic flow of information contained on the Internet, where anyone with a network access can search of any subject of interest without political control may lead to the nonexistence of this vast availability of information mostly because of the fear that the state will never be able to create the ideal circumstances that will regulate the illegal access to personal information.
Bibliography
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