These are the issue I think about regarding 'infoware', to use Tim's term. I am more concerned trying to change the future then to just study the past. I do like to read about history. But what I spend most of my time on is trying to work for a good outcome in these political questions that we face. Friedrich Kittler today was calling to shift our attention from the fight for free software towards a better understanding of the architecture of hardware, which is determining software all together, both proprietory and free.
Free software means that users are free to copy and modify it.
So let us apply that same issue to hardware and see what we get. This table is free, in the sense that you are free to copy and modify it. But you are free to modify it. There is no table copier. You could build another table, which is a certain amount of work.