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tertainment industry, but not one based on excluding access to
published digital works. Once it’s in the world, it’ll be copied. This
is why I give away digital copies of my books and make money on
the printed editions: I’m not going to stop people from copying
the electronic editions, so I might as well treat them as an entice-
ment to buy the printed objects.
But there
is
an information economy. You don’t even need a
computer to participate. My barber, an avowed technophobe who
rebuilds antique motorcycles and doesn’t own a PC, benefited
from the information economy when I found him by googling for
barbershops in my neighborhood.
Teachers benefit from the information economy when they
share lesson plans with their colleagues around the world by email.
Doctors benefit from the information economy when they move
their patient files to efficient digital formats. Insurance compa-
nies benefit from the information economy through better access
to fresh data used in the preparation of actuarial tables. Marinas
benefit from the information economy when office-slaves look up
the weekend’s weather online and decide to skip out on Friday for
a weekend’s sailing. Families of migrant workers benefit from the
information economy when their sons and daughters wire cash
home from a convenience store’s Western Union terminal.
This stuff generates wealth for those who practice it. It en-
riches the country and improves our lives.
And it
can
peacefully co-exist with movies, music, and micro-
code, but not if Hollywood gets to call the shots. Where IT man-
agers are expected to police their networks and systems for un-
authorized copying — no matter what that does to productivity —
they cannot co-exist. Where our operating systems are rendered
inoperable by “copy protection,” they cannot co-exist. Where our
educational institutions are turned into conscript enforcers for
the record industry, they cannot co-exist.
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