Robert B. Laughlin's "The Crime of Reason"

This book presents the concerns of a scientist that today's "Information Economy" will make knowledge illegal and bring the great adventure of the Age of Reason (with its science) to a halt as commercial enterprises use tools such as DMCA (Digital Milliennium Copyright Act) to make knowledge and learning off limits. The book is an easy read with lots of thoughtful bits and a few fun filled bits of crazed extrapolation as well (to keep the book entertaining). This is well worth reading.

The heart of his argument is the tension between economics/state security with its desire to wall off knowledge from the natural human urge to learn:

Yet our right to learn is actually quite problematic. It's not guaranteed by the laws of any country, even ones that pride themselves on openness and explicit codification of human rights. The original reason was probably that people couldn't imagine needing such a law. But the newer, more sinister reason is that countries need strong espionage controls to discourage the "learning" of military secrets crucial to state security. This includes not only logistical and technological information but, increasingly, fundamental scientific understanding that might aid foreign states or terrorists in creating weapons. Governments don't want the right to learn codified because they want to abridge this right as necessary to protect the state. They also want to abridge it as necessary to protect the state's economy. The latter practice was always important, but our transition to the Information Age has given it renewed relevance. The right to learn is now aggressively opposed by intellectual property admovates, who want ideas elevated to the status of land, cars, and other physical assets so that their unauthorized acquisitiona can be prosecuted as theft.

An example of the crazed extrapolation: He ends the book with a techno-nerd/scientist moving to a colonized moon to get access to the free exchange of knowledge looking wistfully back on the earth with the thought:

What a stroke of good fortune it was to escape here! How unthinkable it would be for anyone with a brain to live anywhere else. How irrelevant and decadent that blue ball has become. Still, it would be terrific if they sent up more girls.