Does information really want to be free? – a debate

[caption id="attachment_1356" align="alignright" width="150" caption="Malcolm Gladwell"][/caption] The New Yorker's Malcom Gladwell, author of The Tipping Point and Bink, takes on Wired editor Chris Anderson, author of The Long Tail and Free, in today's edition. Free is essentially an extended elaboration of [occasional Cape Breton summer resident] Stewart Brand’s famous declaration that “information wants to be free.” The digital age, Anderson argues, is exerting an inexorable downward pressure on the prices of all things “made of ideas.” Anderson does not consider this a passing trend. Rather, he seems to think of it as an iron law: “In the digital realm you can try...