On Monday 08 December 2003 06:13, Niall Douglas wrote:
If some top violinist says that all music must be free, would a
sizeable minority of all musicians totally buy into that mantra?
aah I see this is it
yes to say information wants to be free is such a hollow statement. It
seesmt hatt hose who accept it at face value see information as some
rareified thing that is somehow made immune from
power/politics/law/desire beacuse we say it is or wish it to be. The
whole mantra as you have called it needs to be critically analysed. As do
the equally facile staments about non rivalrous, gift economy etc. In my
own little way I have been trying to prompt such a debate but people just
want to reply with the mantra and its coordinates.
I also have this experience. I wince and roll my eyes everytime I hear
someone say "information wants to be free".
I'm probably going to get pummeled for this, but I also have a problem
with RMS's "freeness". RMS is basically a capitalist. he doesn't really
say it, but my guess is the objects of trade in RMS's world of free
software have something to do with ego and recognition.
I certainly think creative work should be reworded, but find RMS's stance
to be old-skool, wierdly neo-liberal, and immature (in good and bad ways).
-august.
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