Rafael Sosa’s Weblog

As reported at TechCrunch, an interesting new site that will attempt to organize the world’s information and set it free through APIs launched today. freebase implicitly proposes what many have been claiming for a long time and now with the Social web in steam, is getting much more attention – an intellectual property revamp in the US.

The purpose of freebase, to provide a central point for knowledge to be stored and extracted freely by anyone eliminates any control by the original author. Even more drastic, the content itself can be manipulated, mashed up, and distorted to the point where it is only but a screw in an elaborate machine. This proposition of free knowledge is an attractive idea, yet the foundations of intellectual property have also served as a crucial driver of innovation.

As so much information is stored in a central system like freebase, easily and freely accessible to everyone, we have to wonder how that will affect the innovation driver in society.