Using encryption to force the metering of information works because it does not conslrain information's desire to reproduce. All things being equal, a bit of information will replicate through an available network until it fills that network. With an animate drive, every fact naturally proliferates as many times as possible. A pretty metaphor compares the spread of genes through a population with the similar spread of ideas, or memes, in a population. Both genes and memes depend on a network of replicating machines-cells or brains or computer terminals.
Information wants to be copied.
Our digital society has built a supernetwork of copiers out of hundreds of millions of personal faxes, library photocopiers, and desktop hard disks. It is as if our information society is one huge aggregate copying machine. But we won't let this supermachine copy. Much to everyone's surprise, information created in one corner finds its way into all the other corners rather quickly. Because our previous economy was built upon scarcity of goods, we have so far fought the natural fecundity of information by trying to control every act of replication as it occurs.