The One With Aldacron

In my last post, I laid out my view that supporters of digital piracy who claim to be fighting evil, greedy corporations are missing the bigger picture. They are ignoring countless small businesses and individuals whose products are pirated just as often as those of major corporations. In summary, I find the argument that “corporations are evil”  simply an ingenuous excuse for pirates to justify their behavior. When people do bad things, they always look for ways to paint themselves as the good guys. Now on to the the point that started this little series of posts.

I opened the last post with the following sentence.

No matter how hard I try, I cannot contort my neurons enough to understand the argument that a creative work is information.

This was in response to the oft-repeated argument by some supporters of digital piracy that information should be free. In their deluded minds, music, movies, software and other digital products are information and, since information should be free, are therefore subject to be downloaded and copied about freely.

Now, if you actually take the time to analyze my remark in the context of digital creative works, it’s rather easy to come back and call me a moron. The problem is with the definition of the word information. Grab a dictionary. Any will do. Look up the word information. Merriam Webster’s online dictionary is my favorite. Their definition of information will do just as well as any other. You’ll find that you can summarize most definitions of the word succinctly as knowledge or data. You may also find, as in the linked definition above, words like facts or intelligence, but these are irrelevant to our discussion.

Before we go any further, let’s focus on the word knowledge for a moment. Philosophers generally consider two types of knowledge. One is referred to as knowing that and the other as knowing how. Mathematics is often used to demonstrate both types. We can know that 1 + 1 is 2. But we can also know how to add two numbers together. Or, as a real world example, I know that my DVD player has a gazillion features, but I don’t yet know how to use them all. I think it’s safe to say that the idea of free knowledge has been around since the concept of knowledge itself. To Aristotle, the pursuit of philosophy was about free knowledge, which meant knowledge for its own sake rather than for any utilitarian purpose. And there have also long been those who believe that knowledge should be free, which is rather different. And, in English anyway, confusing.

The problem with the word free in English is that it has two meanings, libre and gratis. When something is free as in libre, people can share and distribute it at will. This is what the Free Software movement (notice the capital letters) is all about. When something is free as in gratis, it is given away at no cost. This is what freeware is all about. It is quite possible to use a Free Software license, such as the GPL, to distribute software and still charge a fee for it. Several companies do so. It is also possible to give away freeware with restrictive licenses. You can find examples of that on the internet as well.

Now, whether or not knowledge should be free is not a question I’m willing to answer. What I am willing to say is that music, movies, software, and other creative works in no way, shape or form can be considered knowledge. In and of themselves, these things don’t work in the context of knowing how or knowing that. I’ve never heard anyone make the claim that a Monopoly board game is knowledge. The rules certainly are (knowledge-how), but not the representation of the rules. So I don’t see how a case can be made that the computer representation is knowledge.

On a side note, someone I know once made the claim that music is cultural knowledge. I can appreciate that, but I don’t quite agree. Knowing how to play music in a certain style, how to react to it, how to compose it… all of that is certainly cultural knowledge. After all, Asian music, European music, and African music are all quite different. But the music itself is not knowledge anymore than that Monopoly board game is. Sure, the notes and instructions written in a piece of sheet music qualify as knowledge, much as the Monopoly rules. But the representation of music, the sound you hear, is not knowledge.

I’ve use the word representation three times in the two preceding paragraphs. Get used to it. It’s a key concept to this discussion and will come up again as I try to get my point across.

Now to wrap up the discussion of knowledge. To me, as in most people I come in contact with on a daily basis, when the word information is used it is usually in the context of knowledge.  So when I hear the phrase information should be free I understand it as knowledge should be free. And since music, movies, or software all fail to fit the definition of knowledge, this falls flat as an excuse to pirate digital goods. Where the ambiguity arises, and where you can get your ammunition to call me a moron, is when information means data. And that’s for part 3 of this little impromptu series, which will come at a later date. I’m a terribly slow typist.