today, so that it is very difficult, or impossible, to assert a time-dependent level of confidence in the information.

Now, there is another facet of the story. As it is easy to modify information, can this easiness be turned into a positive attribute? In fact, that’s what has happened with the open source movement, an approach to the evolution of digital content which maximizes the value of new contributions by providing them a legal framework of much liberty. Contributors as a whole surrender their intellectual property to the community, and in exchange, they receive the right to use the contributions of other participants. This can be done to evolve textual content, as it is done with Wikipedia, or, say, software, with developments of entire systems, such as the Linux operating system. Naturally, as contributions are voluntary, it is not easy to impart discipline on the participants, and so there is a natural balance established between the open source developments and commercial ones, the former being free and somewhat chaotic, the later being paid and rather disciplined. Of course, there are exceptions in both fields, and we can find open source developments which can be better than commercial equivalents, and commercial developments that beat open source in the capabilities they offer in terms of modifications by eager participants. An example of the former would be certain development tools like those organized around the Java language, an example of the later would be the Amazon tools for electronic commerce.

The value of digital content is often associated with time. Most news’ value vanishes with time. On a light note, the scoring at a game has emotional content when associated with uncertainty about the ultimate result, a feat most easily achieved with simultaneous casting. In the other side of the spectrum in terms of seriousness, the warning of an impeding tornado is only worthy if it is timely. This shows that the value of information is contributed to both by its content and the capabilities of its publication channel. We’ve already seen that the same content can be differently trusted according to its source. In the same way, content can be differently valued according the efficiency of its publication mechanism. Trust in the publication system conveys to that in the information itself.

The way information is produced, distributed, and valued, also depends on its hosting social ecosystems. Government information, business information, public and private information, all depend on different mechanisms, often formally described in law. And depending on the sphere of activity, the value may take different form. While actual money is by essence the main driver in business information, social effects may be more valued in government information. In all cases, information has a value in term of influence. In business, the very format of digital content can be the object of standards wars. The best publicized example of such is the fight between Sony and JVC in the seventies to establish a standard for video cassettes. At the end, VHS beat Betamax, and entire production lines were made obsolete. Obviously, the value of information to government can be measured by the size of the agencies dedicated solely to obtain it from various sources, covert or overt. From a more private, individual perspective, the value of our stock portfolios is just information, numbers. Tell us what stock will be up ten-fold three years from now, and we’ll make you rich.

Yet another attribute of digital content is its transferability. A song can be transferred, exchanged, reproduced, distributed, with or without commercial terms; that’s its function, in most cases. In the opposite, a bank account number and password are closely guarded. In fact, transferability of a bank account is limited by law. For that reason and others, strict means of access to information have to be put in place, by policy and technical means. The policies set in place for the codes to launch the atomic bomb are famous, those surrounding banking information are notoriously secret, and others are a matter of current public debate, like information on the health of

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