There are a number of things the metaphor does address — for instance, the fact that information has value. In that way, it is like property. Also, people want to own information (trade secrets) or share information in a way that is commercially sustainable (patents and copyright). People also want to protect information from misuse or pollution, again like property or land. Information can be personal (medical records, financial information) — again, very much like property. Information can be stolen, vandalized, or mined.

For a framework of laws around something as powerful as information, we do need a metaphor to govern the infractions and monitor fairness (how “Creative Commons” draws on the “commons” aspect of the property metaphor). Even “open access” is about a door, which implies property (a structure, a house, a vault — pick your closed aperture).

To me, the property metaphor for information is useful in a lot of ways, including how we talk about mining, stealing, sharing, opening, protecting, maintaining, and a host of other small metaphorical flourishes that really help anchor the concept to reality. But it is only useful as far as it goes. Once the metaphor fails, we should know to acknowledge it.

As for sharing data as opposed to information, there was a recent very good article about why this isn’t advisable or even likely.

Like property, information also needs a “buyer beware” sign on it most of the time . . .

In the book commissioned by the National Research Council, “Bits of power: Issues in global access to scientific data” [1] the authors argue that data are the “building blocks of scientific knowledge and the seeds of discovery.” They talk about free access to the underlying data, not the article.

Even though the book is over 12 years old, it reads like it was written yesterday. The authors recommend:

“All scientists conducting publicly funded research should make their data available immediately, or following a reasonable period of time for proprietary use. The maximum length of any proprietary period should be expressly established by the particular scientific communities, and compliance should be monitored subsequently by the funding agency.” (p.11)

The authors call for a “distributed international network of data centers” (p.10) that would allow for fair use of scientific data. Licensing would distinguish how the data could be used (free for non-profit academic purposes; negotiated under commercial uses).

A very extensive article [2] (of book length) written by two of the members of the NRC committee develops this idea.

[1] National Research Council. Bits of power : Issues in global access to scientific data. Washington, D. C., National Academy Press, 1997, pp.235.
http://www.nap.edu/openbook.php?record_id=5504

[2] Reichman, J. H., & Uhlir, P. F. 2003. A CONTRACTUALLY RECONSTRUCTED RESEARCH COMMONS FOR SCIENTIFIC DATA IN A HIGHLY PROTECTIONIST INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY ENVIRONMENT. Law and Contemporary Problems 66: 315-462.
http://www.law.duke.edu/shell/cite.pl?66+Law+&+Contemp.+Probs.+315+(WinterSpring+2003)

One might argue that ‘data’ in scholarly articles should be freely accessible – for mining, mash-ups, etc. – but the text, which is essentially interpretation, need not be. This may be a particularly important idea for publishers, since the interpretation is not what is funded by grant-giving bodies and includes much of the publisher’s ‘added value’.