[carapace]

The lack of practical constraints on copying bits is exactly the rationale for the statement.

Since the cost to copy information (once the original bit patterns have been crafted, which process is, as you point out, typically costly) is close to zero it becomes regressive to charge for copies of information.

Clearly we should pay handsomely those who develop the original useful information.

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edit to add:

Sorry, I realized I was just paraphrasing the clip, and you probably already get it and are asking a different question, something like, granted that copying information is very cheap, still why should we just freely give each other useful information? Eh?

The answer there is that we're all in this together and we have serious challenges to face (climate, plastic and other "forever chemicals" and pollution, crashing of the marine ecosystem by destruction of plankton resulting in widespread famine (we eat more fish meat than all other animals), asteroids, etc.) and so we should do our best to accelerate our capabilities and power-with-wisdom to cope with it all.

[andsoitis]

> we have serious challenges to face

Who will ensure the information is accurate? Why would we trust them (which is also a form of information).

Should all information (false, true, and everything in between) have equal cost in production and distribution? How do we update information?

Price as well as cost are tools to shape (for better AND worse) how we can prioritize information or decide how it should flow. There are countless examples of information that we as a civilization probably don’t want everyone to have easy access to. Also you as a private individual…

Freedom: would we force everyone who has some information to make it freely available and prohibit them from charging? Don’t get me wrong, I think there’s some information that should be much freer than it is today (looking at you, scientific community), but overriding people’s freedom to choose what information they make freely available and what they charge for strikes me as unjust.

[carapace]

> Who will ensure the information is accurate? Why would we trust them (which is also a form of information).

In the most general sense I think we are going to rediscover the value and necessity of honor (or descend into a dystopia not worth thinking about.)

Systems of elements that can trust each other are more efficient than systems of elements that cannot.

> Should all information (false, true, and everything in between) have equal cost in production and distribution? How do we update information?

I don't understand these questions.

> Price as well as cost ...

Are these not the same?

> ... we can prioritize information or decide how it should flow. There are countless examples of information that we as a civilization probably don’t want everyone to have easy access to. Also you as a private individual…

Well there it is, eh? Control. Who's "we"?

Anyway, the original context would suggest that Brand meant something like "information that people can use to improve their lives" so he probably didn't mean like nuclear bomb plans, eh?

If you have information that people can use constructively without disadvantaging you then it's kind of venal not to share it, eh? That's the moral or ethical reason for (some) information to be free.

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As an aside, you are inverting the logic here:

> overriding people’s freedom to choose what information they make freely available and what they charge

Physically we do not have that freedom, once data has been encoded in digital bits it becomes difficult to prevent dissemination of those bits. (I'm old enough to have seen Napster in action back in the day.)

Copy prevention (DRM) and commercial activity had to be implemented on top of the fundamental ability of the computer network to duplicate and transmit bits.

In other words if you have information you would keep secret don't put it in a computer.