It's even older than that, by almost a decade. The phrase "Information wants to be free" is famously attributed to Stewart Brand, the counterculture icon and founder of the Whole Earth Catalog. He first uttered it (or a very close version of it) in 1984 during a conversation with Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak at the first Hackers Conference in Marin County, California. Then he wrote about it in his book in 1987.