Should All Information Be Free?

I've been thinking about this for a few days and would like some insight: I believe that information should be free; people should be able to access whatever information on the net they want, without anyone controlling it. But I also believe in privacy, encryption, and anonymity. But now I think these beliefs are incompatible. What exactly do I mean when I say "all information should be free"? What kinds of information apply to that statement? Should people have a right to the information pertaining to my identity, and if no, is this a universal rule? Should everyone's identity be hidden on the net, or just some people? Who controls this? The same applies to privacy. How much of my actions should be private; how much information on what I do be inaccessible to others? Should it only be information pertaining to my actions when alone, or should my interactions with others "behind closed doors" also be considered protected by privacy? Is privacy even something inalienable, or more like a state, in the case of scandals where private affairs become public knowledge? Encryption is even more complex: if I wish information to be free, then why encrypt? What information should be protected with encryption; my identity, my private actions, both? Are some people entitled to encryption and others not? Can encryption be used as a marker for public and private i.e if it isn't encrypted it's automatically public, and vice versa? Looming over all of this are the same questions: Does freedom of information or privacy apply to everyone? Or only some, and who? Who should be protected, and who should be exposed?

Grand narratives like this also fall flat. All information that I want should be available to me, any and all secret information I should have. Anyone who wants any information about me though, shall be granted none, and I shall protest this until I die.

aside from idealistic extremes, I think that the limitation exists in theoretical and practical information. Theories of information and scientific principles should be free, but personal practical information that is really only important for taking advantage of others should be private

>>8049 this a hundred times

>>8048 i'm not sure that these beliefs are truly incompatible. like some other lains have said, it does seem reasonable, despite the potential hypocrisy, to advocate for freedom of information (i.e. freedom to access any information you want to) and to protect your own information. i think that how it works now is sort of like this: if you are good enough (taken to mean whatever you want, it's ultimately unimportant; for the record, i conceive of this as basically if you actually are able to access whatever it is you wanted to access) then you should be able to view what you want. that being said, of course anyone should be able to take as many precautions as they want to prevent others from accessing that information. thus, it is up to the skilled people of society to get the information and disseminate it. thus, there is no discrepancy between wanting freedom of info and taking precautions to protect your own. this works in many respects, although there are some very obvious discrepancies (stemming not, i think, from the dilemma itself but from coercive institutions who demand secrecy and lack of access in order to exist). another way to concieve of this dilemma is that personal information is owned by you, i.e. is your property. this is derived from the fact that you own yourelf and so own the fruits of yourself. thus, attempts to access your personal information without your consent is aggression and wrong/immoral/etc. however, non-personal information is not the fruit of your body (in the sense that it is not specific to your body and your "possession" of it does not deprive someone else from having it as well; it is non-specific to you, and additionally is not scarce so "possession" of it, should such a thing/concept exist must be conceived of differently), so it would be wrong to prevent someone else from viewing the same information, assuming that it exists in some accessible form (obviously if it does not exist in some accessible form, then it must exist only in your head and so it would be wrong, imo, to "access" that, assuming it were possible). as to the specifics of your questions: >>What exactly do I mean when I say "all information should be free"? What kinds of information apply to that statement? i think any information which might be said to be personal and specific to you, such that outsider knowledge of it would deprive you of autonomy. i don't really know how to express this in understandable terms, or example terms, but appeal to, i suppose, intuition and general understanding in order to sort this out. basically, what we generally understand as being "personal" information today would almost certainly be counted. >>Should people have a right to the information pertaining to my identity, and if no, is this a universal rule? Should everyone's identity be hidden on the net, or just some people? Who controls this? anyone who cares should be able to (and be encouraged to) encrypt and hide whatever they might want to, and interested people should (and should be encouraged to) work on solutions to make this better and more acceptable/intuitive/etc. i think it is generally a universal rule in so far as it should apply to all people; that being said, i think that anything which you put out into public (taken to be what we currently understand it to be) is fair game as far as access to information goes. >>How much of my actions should be private; how much information on what I do be inaccessible to others? Should it only be information pertaining to my actions when alone, or should my interactions with others "behind closed doors" also be considered protected by privacy? Is privacy even something inalienable, or more like a state, in the case of scandals where private affairs become public knowledge? i think privacy must not be inalienable because it simply does not seem to work that way. people tend to keep secrets (i.e. keep information private); when someone discovers a secret, it (usually) doesn't suddenly become public, but is the secret keeper's privacy still broken? i think the answer to that is yes. i guess it depends on what exactly privacy *is*; i.e. is privacy an absolute state of secrecy or is it more malleable or indeterminate, like a scale of states (e.g. absolute secrecy, one other person, a few other people, several others, many, etc.)? i think that your own information, whether solely with yourself or with others, must remain as personal information, and so should be considered personal property, so long as it is information which pertains to yourself or the others with whom you interact; put another way, it is personal information so long as it does not deal with people not related to you or your conversation partners. basically what i think is less that "information should be free" and more "information wants to be free" and ultimately will be; that is, not all information will be free, probably, but information tends towards freedom and access, through skillful individuals and groups who find and put out such information, and good technology which spreads it around and ensures its survival. this is perhaps a naive view, but i think this is generally the case. i only wish that coercive institutions, or at least those which must/will still exist, were more transparent, but this is, of course, contrary to their very nature so i can hardly fault them (any more than i already do, at least).

You never said why you think it should be free, you never elaborated just diverged topic to branch it out. Explain why you think it should be free and we will talk.

Personal info shouldn't. Information of value to the public (educational, scientific, etc) should. Also you gotta understand that free can be free as in where it's stored too. Nowadays there's a soykafload of important information that's only stored in Google or Amazon servers and thats bollocks. If you as a person don't want to share something, you're in your right to do so. If they, as a person or organization, want to own and patent soykaf that could potentially save your life or make it better, they shouldn't do it.

Information can be put into any number of arbitrary groups you want. It makes sense to me to have three. Proprietary/Private information: >personal information >trade secrets >non-free source code Intellectual Property: >non-free software >copyrighted information >patents Common Domain: >facts >common knowledge >free software Most folks would agree that personal and proprietary information should be kept secret, and you'd have to be a turbo-jew to try and restrict common domain information. That just leaves Intellectual Property. I believe Intellectual Property should be free because that would allow culture to grow in meaningful ways, but my mind could be changed on that. When you group things into categories like this it also can leave gray areas but at least that gets the ball rolling.