If the payment process can be automated, as digital cash and signature will make possible, I believe that soft-product creators will reap a much higher return from the bread they cast upon the waters of cyberspace. Moreover, they will be spared much of the overhead presently attached to the marketing, manufacture, sales, and distribution of information products, whether those products are computer programs, books, CDs, or motion pictures. This will reduce prices and further increase the likelihood of noncompulsory payment.
Predictor: Barlow, John Perry
Prediction, in context:In a 1994 essay for Wired magazine, John Perry Barlow, a co-founder of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, discusses patents and copyrights in the digital age. Barlow writes: ”Cryptography will not be used simply for making locks. It is also at the heart of both digital signatures and … digital cash, both of which I believe will be central to the future protection of intellectual property. I believe that the generally acknowledged failure of the shareware model in software had less to do with dishonesty than with the simple inconvenience of paying for shareware. If the payment process can be automated, as digital cash and signature will make possible, I believe that soft-product creators will reap a much higher return from the bread they cast upon the waters of cyberspace. Moreover, they will be spared much of the overhead presently attached to the marketing, manufacture, sales, and distribution of information products, whether those products are computer programs, books, CDs, or motion pictures. This will reduce prices and further increase the likelihood of noncompulsory payment. But of course there is a fundamental problem with a system that requires, through technology, payment for every access to a particular expression. It defeats the original Jeffersonian purpose of seeing that ideas were available to everyone regardless of their economic station. I am not comfortable with a model that will restrict inquiry to the wealthy.”
Biography:John Perry Barlow helped found the Electronic Frontier Foundation in 1990 with WELL (Whole Earth ‘Lectronic Link) members Mitch Kapor and John Gilmore in direct response to a threat to free speech. Barlow’s was one of the loudest voices in the battle to keep the Internet unfettered while still encouraging that it become a tool available to everyone. (Advocate/Voice of the People.)
Date of prediction: January 1, 1994
Topic of prediction: Controversial Issues
Subtopic: Copyright/Intellectual Property/Plagiarismy
Name of publication: Wired
Title, headline, chapter name: The Economy of Ideas: A Framework for Patents and Copyrights in the Digital Age (Everything You Know About Intellectual Property is Wrong)
Quote Type: Direct quote
Page number or URL of document at time of study:
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/2.03/economy.ideas_pr.html
This data was logged into the Elon/Pew Predictions Database by: Anderson, Janna Quitney