The Cost of Free Information

Available for over a year

Against a backdrop of perceived excess of intellectual property, and problems that require solving with a matter of urgency, Rana Mitter and his panel test the promises of the internet to spread ideas quickly and democratically. Jodie Ginsburg is the Chief Executive of Index on Censorship and former London bureau chief for Reuters. Dr Rufus Pollock is Founder and President of Open Knowledge, an international non profit organisation which promotes making data and information accessible. Kenneth Cukier is Data Editor for The Economist magazine. From advocates of open source who claim that information should be set free from to new economic models that purport to place cooperation over competition, the discussion looks at what these changes mean and how they ripple out to affect our behaviour offline as well as on - disrupting notions of ownership and originality. Recorded in front of an audience at BBC Radio 3's Free Thinking Festival of Ideas at Sage Gateshead. The festival theme this year was the limits of knowledge. All the discussions and essays from the Free Thinking festival are available as Radio 3 Arts and Ideas downloads. Producer: Georgia Catt.