On the Media

This week, I chose to listen to the episode about Aaron Swartz called 'The Wunderkind of the Free Culture Movement" this episode interviews Justin Peters author of the book The Idealist: Aaron Swartz and the Rise of Free Culture on the Internet.

The interview, like the book, compares the life of Aaron Swartz with evolution of copyright laws. It begs the question: who is an information moralist? Is an information moralist the author who believes stealing is wrong? It he the publisher who takes established works of literature from overseas and sells them for nothing? Is he the one who spends the entirety of the 1980's transcribing the bible so that it may be searched one day? Is the moralist the advocate for copyright who convinces preachers to sneak copyright into their sermons? Or is the moralist the person who creates open access to eliminate the privatization of information?  

This question is especially tough to answer for me. I see media in two parts: the creator, and the consumer. It is difficult for me to separate my feelings between the two because I see myself as both. Like Fitzgeralds wrote, "I am both within and without." I am both a consumer who wants open and easily accessible information, and a creator who wants to benefit from my work. While examining the life of Aaron Swartz the author brings to mind a quote from Stewart Brand: 

"Information wants to be free!"

Justin Peters expands upon this slogan saying information wants to be free because it so infinitely cheap to recreate, however, it also wants to be expensive because it is so valuable to the creator. In the information age this becomes more and more true. How much money did Amazon make off your last Ebook purchase versus how much it cost to produce? Imagine a world where we could download our entire textbooks for free. Who is the REAL benefactor of this information, especially information created by those no longer living?

Swartz was first inspired to pursue free and open information when reading the book Understanding Power afterwards Swartz said he could not unsee it. He then pushed what he called content liberation. He wanted to honor the ideal of civil disobedience, claiming it was our duty to share to prevent the privatization of information.

Much like the author in this interview, I surprisingly sided more with Swartz by the end. I too have seen friends lose job opportunities because people are no longer paying for content. However, while learning more and more about the conception of copyright, it seems more and more like a fiscal issue that is being presented as a moral issue. It was fascinating to learn of the push of international copyright in churches. It makes me wonder what other issues have been pushed as "moral"?

What do you think?

Does copyright encourage more creation?


Or does it only benefit a few? 

All in all, this was an interesting conversation that needed to be had.