iPhone and Intellectual Property in the Digital Age

Light On Light Through · Aug 27, 2007

It was the summer of 1984 - the very dawn of the digital age. Stewart Brand and I were having lunch with several other people near the Western Behavioral Sciences Institute in La Jolla, California, where we had just given lectures in the morning. That was when I first heard Stewart say "information wants to be free." He said it again over lunch. And I replied - well, maybe so, but creators of information still need to eat. I was a staunch supporter of copyright and patent.

I'm still a strong believer in copyright. But, in the two and a half decades since then, the wretched excesses of the…