Nature's Guarantee

In Lawrence Lessig's article Open Code and Open Societies he proposes the thought that Thomas Jefferson's idea, that the laws of Nature make information free, is wrong.  Jefferson says that once information is released, "it forces itself into the possession of everyone, and the receiver cannot dispossess himself of it." (Lessig 7)  Lessig then counters that this may be true, but not for the Internet due to closed coding.  Information is then retained to be "owned" distributed solely by the producer and, unlike copyrights, never expires.  This means that it is against the law for the information to be used by anyone, or for anything, not authorized by the one who produces and distributes the information.

"He was wrong to believe that nature would conspire always to keep ideas free. He was wrong to believe that he knew enough about what nature could do to understand what nature would always defend...What Jefferson thought essentially and perpetually free is only free if we choose to leave it open; only free if we code the space to keep it free; only free if we make it so.  What Jefferson thought Nature guaranteed, turns out to be a good idea that we must defend." (Lessig 8)

It is interesting that Lessig would say that the notion that ideas want to be free and will find a way to be free does not apply to the Internet.  I think that all of us would agree that this "law" (per se) when applied to some communication form (other than the Internet) is completely true.  For example, everyone in the United States has heard about the World Trade Center tragedies.  It was written about in papers, talked about on the news, and passed through many other manners of communication.  Even if you were a person who told themselves that they didn't want to hear the details of what happened you probably found it difficult (I'd wager impossible) to keep that information from reaching you. Has anyone who heard about that event forgotten about it?  This is Jefferson's theory in practice.  Information was forced upon us and we could not, and cannot, forget or return it.

But is this the case with the Internet?  Lessig thinks not.  He mentions laws were put in place to increase the protection that content received and that codes and encryptions were developed to protect content.  But protect it from what?  Protect it from uncontrolled distribution.  To make information so that it no longer wants to be free and force itself into peoples possession, never to be released in order to insure a constant stream of revenue unchallenged by outsiders.

I am no expert in this subject, but I believe that Lessig is only partially right on this point.  True, laws and encryptions have been made in order to allow companies greater control over their content and information, but how much really?  Laws can be broken.  They are broken all of the time.  No one can or will deny this.  Encryptions, like laws, can be, and are, broken.  Illegally or not, they are broken.  This is in itself Nature in action.  The information and the ideas still want to be free, and they find a way. 

Some might argue that we, humans, are interfering so the natural law cannot be proven to be true.  I suppose my argument is that while this is true, in a way, we too are part of nature.  So what if we help it to accomplish its tasks once in a while?