ABSTRACT
In 2003, the world produced about 800MB of information for each man, woman, and child on earth. The Internet Archive has already digitized many gigabytes of audio, video, and textual material. Google announced it intends to digitize 15 million library books. These trends suggest that the most useful information will be available in digital form. First, there is the problem of literacy. There are approximately 900 million illiterate adults in the world, two-thirds of them women. Information, or at least written information, cannot be successfully delivered to those who cannot read. Second, there is the problem of infrastructure. Moore's Law is working in our favor, and it appears that it will be possible to build very inexpensive information-access devices. Universal access to all the world's information is technologically possible now; the missing piece is the legal infrastructure that will provide the incentives to make such access economically viable.
