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From: ark@rabbit.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.philosophy
Subject: New topic: property status of information
Message-ID: <2212@rabbit.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 17-Nov-83 16:31:10 EST
Article-I.D.: rabbit.2212
Posted: Thu Nov 17 16:31:10 1983
Date-Received: Sat, 19-Nov-83 01:37:13 EST
Organization: AT&T Bell Laboratories, Murray Hill
Lines: 19

I want to start discussion on a question that seems to
be becoming ever more important these days:

	Is information property?

Any answer has rather deep implications.  For instance,
every time I use a credit card to buy something, information
is created.  Who owns that information?  What kind of control
should they have over it?

I am particularly interested in hearing arguments that start
from first principles and work toward consequences, rather than
assuming that certain consequences are desirable and then trying
to come up with principles that justify them.

I would like to extend a special invitation to Tom Craver to
comment on this issue:  it seems to be the sort of thing on which
Objectivists would have a strong position, but I can't think of
anything I've seen about it from them.