Information stamps for the poor

'Payment for use' of information is believed to inhibit browsing on the information highway. It is said that electronic networks will become such an essential means of obtaining information that more radical measures may be needed to insure broad access.

For instance, Anne Wells Branscomb, a policy analyst at Harvard University and author of the book Who Owns Information?, has floated the idea of 'information stamps' that would give students, lower-income people and perhaps every citizen the ability to consume a certain amount of digital information.

'If you do that, though, then you have to decide as a society how much frivolous information you should subsidise,' she said.