Information as a Commodity:

Control and Benefit Are Morally Owed to the Source

Richard A. Wright

• 1. Introduction
• 2. Reframing the Issues
• 3. The “High Cost to Industry” Defense
• 3.1 Raw Materials as a Cost of Doing Business
• 3.2 The Cost of Correcting Past Inequities as a Cost of Doing Business
• 3.3 Originator Control of Materials as a Feature of Doing Business
• 4. The “Private” is “Public” Defense
• 4.1 Private Information and “Voluntary” Release
• 4.2 Private Information in the “Public” Domain
• 4.3 Autonomy as the Basis for Understanding Privacy
• 5. Toward a Resolution
• 6. Concluding Thoughts

The Cost of Correcting Past Inequities as a Cost of Doing Business

That the industry already exists and has significant resources tied up in its operations is not totally irrelevant, but neither is it sufficient to accept the status quo, unless a case can be made that the material needed for their product, the original information, was legitimately obtained. To do otherwise is like allowing drug kingpins to retain the profits from their illegal activities after they have been convicted. What makes the information industry even worse is that they get to retain not only the profit but the product. For all they do is sell a copy, retaining the master for theoretically infinite resale. On analogy, the drug kingpin would need to be able to retain both the drug and the income, which is of course impossible. The information industry is thus in a unique situation which must itself be justified, not simply used as the reason for maintaining the status quo.

More importantly, there is a strong underlying assumption in this country that past inequities should be redressed. We may argue about exactly what the inequities are, or how they should be redressed, and by whom; but we do not question the basic assumption. In fact, that assumption is the foundation of both the torts system and civil rights enforcement in the United States. As a result, the recognition of past inequities in the information industry’s obtaining of its raw materials should lead to corrections as they would apply to any other industry.

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