Stewart Brand Quotes

Information doesn't want to be free. Information wants to be valuable.

I believe our basic information, our 'software', should be free and open for everyone to play with, to compete with, to try and make products from. I do not believe it should be under the control of one person.

If information wants to be free, then that's true everywhere, not just in information technology.

Organize all the world’s information and make it universally accessible whatever the consequences

A governing ethos of the Internet has been that whatever flows through it - information, ideas - is up for grabs.

Information wants to be free.

Make information free for all.

Information wants to eat brie.

Information wants to be free, because the cost of getting it out is getting lower and lower all the time.

On the one hand information wants to be expensive, because it's so valuable. The right information in the right place just changes your life. On the other hand, information wants to be free, because the cost of getting it out is getting lower and lower all the time. So you have these two fighting against each other.

All information belongs to everybody all the time. It should be available. It should be accessible to the child, to the woman, to the man, to the old person, to the semiliterate, to the presidents of universities, to everyone. It should be open.

Next time you open the paper, and you see an intellectual property decision, a telecoms decision, it's not about something small and technical. It is about the future of the freedom to be as social beings with each other, and the way information, knowledge and culture will be produced.

The unlimited replication of information is generally a public good.

I think, ultimately, open always wins out. It wins out because you cannot lock data in; you can't lock people in. They will find a way out.

The greatest interest at stake is not that of the copyright holders or the database companies, rather it is the interest a free and open society has in ensuring that everyone can learn the facts, regardless of their economic background. We should regard our nation’s involvement in the knowledge of its citizens … as the highest and most precious intellectual property we can ever protect.

If formerly restrictive regimes can be persuaded to see the free flow of information not as a threat to the power of sovereign states, but as the creator of a viable economic infrastructure and a population incentivised to take advantage of the new economy, the next century will be promising indeed.

If nature has made any one thing less susceptible than all others of exclusive property, it is the action of the thinking power called an idea, which an individual may exclusively possess as long as he keeps it to himself; but the moment it is divulged, it forces itself into the possession of everyone.

Imagine a world in which every single person on the planet is given free access to the sum of all human knowledge. That's what we're doing

The free flow of information is vital for economic development.

Ordinary Chinese are also getting unprecedented access to information. More than half a billion Chinese now use the Internet.

The digital revolution has also meant a revolution in access to information. This puts more power and knowledge into the hands of nonexperts.

All content should be copied without restriction. But for education and research, copyright laws are especially damaging.

You share things with people and I think information, and art, and ideas should be shared.