{"id":1205,"date":"2005-06-27T13:01:23","date_gmt":"2005-06-27T17:01:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/nateptest\/2005\/06\/27\/information-everywhere-wants-to-be-"},"modified":"2005-06-27T13:01:23","modified_gmt":"2005-06-27T17:01:23","slug":"information-everywhere-wants-to-be-free-but-is-in-chains","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/natep\/2005\/06\/27\/information-everywhere-wants-to-be-free-but-is-in-chains\/","title":{"rendered":"Information everywhere wants to be free but is in chains"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a name='a1074'><\/a><\/p>\n<p>A couple of Supreme Court cases dealing with very different aspects of<br \/>\nthe freedom of information and ideas have come down, and they are blows<br \/>\nfor those who want free inquiry and the growth of understanding to<br \/>\ncontinue.<\/p>\n<p>First, the court refused to hear the appeal of the reporters in the<br \/>\nValerie Plame case.&nbsp; So, for doing their jobs, these two people<br \/>\nwill go to jail.&nbsp; What&#8217;s infuriating here is that the law, in its<br \/>\nmajesty, has been applied and used unevenly.&nbsp; The reporters from<br \/>\nthe New York Times and Time Magazine may go to jail.&nbsp; But the<br \/>\nleaker and the syndicated right-wing columnist Bob Novak (who<br \/>\noriginally leaked the material on Valerie Plame) haven&#8217;t been pressured<br \/>\nat all.&nbsp; The leaker can&#8217;t be punished because we don&#8217;t know who it<br \/>\nis.&nbsp; But Bob Novak is quite obviously a good shill for the<br \/>\nadministration, whereas real reporters aren&#8217;t easily controlled.<\/p>\n<p>The Court also ruled that the software companies who create file<br \/>\nsharing programs can be held liable if their software is used to do<br \/>\nillegal things.&nbsp; This seems rather odd.&nbsp; If the principle<br \/>\nwere applied evenly, then we&#8217;d hold auto companies liable when drivers<br \/>\nspeed, computer companies responsible when users hack into private<br \/>\nsites and data, or phone companies liable when people conduct illegal<br \/>\nbusiness over the phone.&nbsp; And, lacking evidence that does not come<br \/>\nfrom a record company or some other &#8220;interested party&#8221; about how file<br \/>\nsharing networks are actually used, I won&#8217;t buy the argument that the<br \/>\nonly or primary use of such software is for illegal purposes.<\/p>\n<p>But hey, free, open, and honest inquiry and learning is hardly valued in our society.&nbsp; Not when there is money to be made.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A couple of Supreme Court cases dealing with very different aspects of the freedom of information and ideas have come down, and they are blows for those who want free inquiry and the growth of understanding to continue. First, the court refused to hear the appeal of the reporters in the Valerie Plame case.&nbsp; So, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":709,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[46],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1205","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politicks"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5G3PH-jr","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/natep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1205","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/natep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/natep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/natep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/709"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/natep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1205"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/natep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1205\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/natep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1205"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/natep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1205"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/natep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1205"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}