Ready for review.

The ideas in this essay crystallized after watching Cory Doctorow’s recent lecture, The Coming War on the General Purpose Computer.

We believe that in a free society, government enforces laws that limit our freedom of action in order to protect our safety and order society the way we'd like. We'd like to believe that our thoughts can't be restricted. Maybe we could accept a limit on what we can read or hear -- if only rarely, when needed to keep us safe from our darkest fears, terrorists, child pornographers, identity thieves.... Still,there can't be limits imposed on thought alone.

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Computers challenge our idea of a free society based on freedom of thought and conscience. Computers are now the way we gain and share knowledge. They can run 3-D printers to build physical objects and devices. They can run machines to manipulate DNA and modify microorganisms. Governments may enforce laws to stop computers from copying movies, build counterfeit or dangerous goods, or synthesize patented or dangerous microorganisms. But, controlling what we can do with a computer doesn't just infringe on the freedom to do, it also infringes on the freedom to think.

When we think about computers, we don't usually think about what computers actually are, just what they do -- the software they run or the content they display. The computer is just a passive, invisible entity. We don't even call most of them "computers." We use words like "smartphone," or "tablet" instead of "tablet computer." Kindles and Nooks are "e-readers." Playstations are "game consoles," even though they are basically desktop PCs, and we usually ignore the computers in Blu-Ray players and inside cars. But, these are all programmable, universal computers.

Universal computers are special, because they can execute any algorithm. Algorithms are just thoughts that have been broken down to pieces, a set of process and rules that can be described using logic. What algorithms computers can run is limited only by the speed of their circuitry and capacity to store data. Computers are "thinking machines," even though that's a concept that usually comes up in exotic, metaphysical discussions of artificial intelligence and silicon consciousness, the stuff that Kurzweil writes about. The reality of computers seems much more mundane; they just follow concrete, logical instructions. But, computers are already thinking for us, if not exactly like us. Computers execute our thoughts, or someone else's or a collective's thoughts, and then display the results.

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The "Information Age" is characterized by the word "information." Information is a long, Latin-rooted, technical-sounding word. We understand it, when read or heard, at an intellectual remove from our living experience. "Knowing" means basically the same thing, but it's not used as much in this context. "The Information Age" is basically a marketing phrase, used to sell people on the idea that money can be made by buying and selling information. But "knowing" is "thinking." Commercializing thought is a tougher sell. To control the marketplace of thought would mean having to control thought, and we don't like to contemplate what that means for a free society. Maybe advertising really is about that, but we don't like to think about what that implies. So we use "information" instead, to feel more comfortable. Information may be bought, sold, and owned, but thoughts are still free.

So, the Information Age marketer sells a piece of information, which is translated into a series of logical processes, run through a universal computer, and turned into numbers that can be stored and displayed. A universal computer can run any algorithm with which it is programmed. Duplicating what it has stored in its memory, even when it's only cached there temporarily, is really easy. This means that profits can't be extracted from the scarcity of information.

In an attempt to make the information artificially scarce, sellers have tried increasingly sophisticated mechanisms to control it. But, these have been foiled again and again. Universal computers can run the algorithms that defeat the restrictions, because they have to be leaky for the information to be distributed and read by paying customers. Information sellers respond by developing restrictions that are increasingly fundamental to the operation of the computer. For example, software can be silently installed in computers that secretly reports on unauthorized access when a computer goes online, or even shuts computer's operating system and ability to function entirely. This is especially common in computers that are marketed in ways that avoid calling them "computers," like smartphones, tablets, game consoles, and embedded devices.

Anything thought builds, though, thought can undo. Thoughts, implemented as algorithms running on computers, can be used to break all the most sophisticated locks placed on information. The knowledge of how to circumvent can be restricted by banning certain algorithms, censoring the websites that publicize them, and watching those who seek them. Algorithms, imagined by knowledge applied creatively, can go around all these measures. So, the only solution is to ban the thoughts behind the algorithm -- to punish the people who think about them and try to learn about them.

This is why copyright law in the digital age is inconsistent with our conception of free society based on freedom of thought. Enforcement means outlawing circumvention. It means limiting thought, and punishing it when it goes out of bounds. Still, enforcing these laws can't prevent anything. The police can only go after violators after the fact, after the locks have been broken, and the information products -- thoughts -- go free, breaking that carefully constructed market built on false scarcity.

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Soon, many of us will ask governments to stop evil people from building 3-D printing weapons and synthesizing infectious agents. But, any technological countermeasures will fail, no matter how sophisticated they are, and no matter how heavily backed by laws and their enforcement. The only recourse will be to more severely punish those whom are caught -- only after the locks are already broken. There is a better alternative. We can finally set aside the false choice between freedom and safety. We can stop avoiding hard problems by punishing thinking, and instead share our thoughts and work to build solutions.