The statement “Data wants to be free” is often used in discussions about accessing listings on the Internet. Examining the origin of this statement is useful when trying to get a handle on the technical implications on both sides of the debate.
First of all, I would like to point out that the statement is derived from the following:
“Information wants to be free. Information also wants to be expensive. Information wants to be free because it has become so cheap to distribute, copy, and recombine—too cheap to meter. It wants to be expensive because it can be immeasurably valuable to the recipient. That tension will not go away. It leads to endless wrenching debate about price, copyright, ‘intellectual property’, the moral rightness of casual distribution, because each round of new devices makes the tension worse, not better.” ~ Stewart Brand - 1984
The “tension” Brand talked about is ever present in the Real Estate market. As technologists, we are called upon to weigh in on this debate as well as to design solutions. It is important to separate the politics from the technology early on in the process. Certainly there are costs associated with obtaining listings, therefore it is a reasonable to expect compensation for the collection effort. Attempts to draw parallels between listing information and public records are not accurate for too many reasons for me to enumerate. This is not the point of my post anyway, so I will get back to technology issues.
An important thing to remember when offering opinions on the “free data” is that different elements of human society operate at different speeds. Again, the thoughts of Brand can be used to demonstrate why governance has a difficult time controlling commerce. Just when you think you have a solution, the problem changes. I don’t even want to start talking about stopping SPAM or viruses.
So what happens when when you try to control something with technology? If it a fast moving target, you have to make sure that the benefits of the efforts outweigh the cost. When examining the foundation of Say’s Law of economics, it can be seen that the cost of building solutions cannot exceed the utility that is derived. I don’t want to you to get the impression that I think that there is no value to what we are trying to protect though. I think we need to look at the cost and effectiveness (utility) of the solutions.
There are several “camps” being formed around the control of data:
- Procedure
- Digital Rights Management (DRM)
- Authentication
The Procedure camp looks to solve the problem with adjustments to business policy. Examples of this would be frequently changing passwords or limiting the amount of data that actually flows. The thinking on password management is that if changing them frequently (via policy) increases the barrier to abuse. Limiting the amount of data is cited is an example of distributing only the information that is required. If you don’t sensitive information out in the first place, it can’t be misused.
Another group looks to Digital Rights Management (DRM) for solutions to the problem. Proponents of the approach include the Music and Video industries who have wrestled with theft for some time. Corey Doctorow does a good job representing the detractors to this approach. He believes that adjusting business practices is more effective than DRM.
One of the newer approaches surfacing in our industry are new authentication mechanisms. These have actually been used successfully in other markets but are new to Real Estate. Other names for technology are “keys”, “fobs” or “two-factor authentication”. This group is further “forking” into the Federated Identity group that looks to have identity (whether it is contained on a “fob” or not) validated by a third party.
I am not passing judgment on any of these “camps” (well, maybe I’m a bit anti-DRM) but would be interested on how others feel about my categorization.
[Update 9/12/05] - I saw an article referenced 0n Slashdot today that discussed the Six Dumbest Ideas in Computer Security. It is related to my previous post because it talks about all of the wasted time and money being spent on security.
