Editing Information society (section)

==Intellectual property considerations==
One of the central paradoxes of the information society is that it makes information easily reproducible, leading to a variety of freedom/control problems relating to [[intellectual property]]. Essentially, business and capital, whose place becomes that of producing and selling information and knowledge, seems to require control over this new resource so that it can effectively be managed and sold as the basis of the information economy. However, such control can prove to be both technically and socially problematic. Technically because [[copy protection]] is often easily circumvented and socially ''rejected'' because the users and citizens of the information society can prove to be unwilling to accept such absolute [[commodification]] of the facts and information that compose their environment.

Responses to this concern range from the [[Digital Millennium Copyright Act]] in the United States (and similar legislation elsewhere) which make [[copy protection]] (see [[Digital rights management]]) circumvention illegal, to the [[free software]], [[open source]] and [[copyleft]] movements, which seek to encourage and disseminate the "freedom" of various information products (traditionally both as in "gratis" or free of cost, and liberty, as in freedom to use, explore and share).

Caveat: Information society is often used by politicians meaning something like "we all do internet now"; the sociological term information society (or informational society) has some deeper implications about change of societal structure. Because we lack political control of intellectual property, we are lacking in a concrete map of issues, an analysis of costs and benefits, and functioning political groups that are unified by common interests representing different opinions of this diverse situation that are prominent in the information society.<ref>Boyle, James. “A Politics of Intellectual Property: Environmentalism for the Net?” Duke Law Journal, vol. 47, no. 1, 1997, pp. 87–116. JSTOR, JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/1372861.</ref>