Information Wants to Be Free: Difference between revisions

[[File:riaa-vs-piratebay-s_8145s 8145.jpg|frame]]

{{quote|''As the Americans learned so painfully in Earth's final century, free flow of information is the only safeguard against tyranny. The once-chained people whose leaders at last lose their grip on information flow will soon burst with freedom and vitality, but the free nation gradually constricting its grip on public discourse has begun its rapid slide into despotism. Beware of he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart he deems himself your master.''|''[[Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri]]'', Commissioner Pravin Lal, "U.N. Declaration of Rights"}}

Alice has something she wants to share with the world. A scientific advancement, most often. She's going to go public and make the world, perhaps, a little better. Maybe it's the cure for a disease, a solution for world hunger or an abundant source of energy. Maybe it's [[ET Gave Us Wi -Fi|of alien origin]]. In any case, Alice doesn't want to limit access to it through copyrights or patents or anything of the sort.

* This is the reason for Laughing Man's struggle in ''[[Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex]]''. A scientist found an effective cure for cyberbrain sclerosis (a phenomenon where people with electronic brain implants would have parts of their organic brains harden, essentially the future version of alzheimers and AIDS), but various people with ties to nanobot companies<ref>Being a post cyberpunk work, the conspiritors had different motives; some wanted to make more money, others had grudges and others sincerely believed letting a few people die so that more research into the nanobot treatments would be done was worth it in the long run.</ref> surpressed the discovery (they didn't outright kill the scientist, just discredited him and arranged a media blackout) so that they could continue selling expensive nanobot treatments which (at the time) were much less effective.

== ComicsComic Books ==

* In ''[[Unknown (2011 film)|Unknown]]'', the assassins' goal is to prevent the open-source release of a new variety of corn on behalf of agribusiness giants.

* "The Green Leopard Plague", a short story by Walter Jon Williams [https://web.archive.org/web/20120212125036/http://www.asimovs.com/_issue_0406/greenleopards.shtml (available here)] features this regarding hunger; [[Framing Device|the main character uncovers the history]] of how the invention of photosynthesis in humans to combat hunger was suppressed by regimes who used it as a weapon.

* Anonymous canhas bebeen considered this, though [[Your Mileage May Vary]] ''[[Rule of Cautious Editing Judgment|significantly]]''.

** Early on in ''[[Schlock Mercenary]]'', the mercenaries are attacked repeatedly by the F'sherl Ganni Gatekeepers, due to experimenting with (and holding the patent for) the 'Teraport', a method of [[Faster-Than-Light Travel]] that far outstrips the unwieldy [[Portal Network]] that got the F'sherl Ganni their name as well as discovering that {{spoiler|said [[Portal Network]] also works as a series of duplicators allowing the F'sherl Ganni to torture clones of their MILLIONS of users for information then kill them}}. Finally, Admiral Breya Andreyasn figures out that there's a way to stop the attacks: Release the Teraport into Open Source, essentially spreading the technology freely across the galaxy, and removing the Gatekeepers' reason to specifically target TargonTagon's Toughs.

*** {{spoiler|This has the unfortunate side effect of {{spoiler|starting a LOT of [[Nice Job Breaking It, Hero|wars]]}}.

* In ''[[The Inexplicable Adventures of Bob]],'', when [[Named After Somebody Famous|Dean Martin]] [http://bobadventures.comicgenesis.com/d/20071211.html steals Jean Poule's research data] to make a monster of his own, he justifies the theft by saying, "But ''information wants to be free''! I had a public ''duty'' to steal it!"

[[Category:Information Wants to Be Free{{PAGENAME}}]]