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What is Information Freedom

I am a hacker, so I naturally support information freedom. However, compared to freedom of expression, information freedom is a much less known concept. In this post, I'll try to explain what I understand by information freedom (you may compare it to the Wikipedia article if you want, which may or may not agree with me).

As a supporter of information freedom, I think no information should be destroyed, eradicated or hidden. Obviously I agree with the right to privacy - I'm only talking about public information. However, if the private information gets leaked, it stops being private in my view - privacy should be protected by not publishing private info in the first place, not legally pursuing everyone who reshares it.

I think culture must be preserved at all costs - we have more than enough storage capacity for that. Yes, the "harmful", the "dangerous" information has to be preserved too - no information should be illegal.

To the extent to which information is illegal, it should be still spread by illegal means, anonymously - some day it will stop being illegal! In case of copyright, it's simple - it becomes legal to share all works 70 years after the author's death. In case of information whose spread is prohibited by other means, whether the information is labeled as "communist propaganda", "promotion of illegal acts", leaked government documents "compromising national security" or whatever else, it might already be legal in some other country, but if it isn't, some day some country (maybe your own!) will surely change the laws to allow it.

Failing to preserve information by any means necessary, large parts of our culture will be simply gone. Does it matter? Yes! Culture is part of our history, and please don't tell me history isn't important. If a piece of media is atrocious, it still has value, if only as a documentation of said atrocities and a warning to future generations. Even seemingly useless information can be helpful later on, especially for future technologically advanced high-throughput data mining.

You can see how "freedom of information", as defined by me, is considerably different from "freedom of expression"/"free speech". I sometimes see the two confused or lumped together, hopefully this post will help you understand the difference!


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