Cyberpunks
Brand's attribution of will to an abstract human construct (information) has been adopted within a branch of the Cyberpunk movement, whose members espouse a particular political (Anarchist) viewpoint. The construction of the statement takes its meaning beyond the simple judgmental observation, "Information should be free" by acknowledging that the internal force or entelechy of information and knowledge makes it essentially incompatible with notions of proprietary software, copyrights, patents, subscription services, etc. Information is dynamic, ever-growing and evolving and cannot be contained within (any) ideological structure.
According to this philosophy, hackers, crackers, and phreakers are liberators of information which is being held hostage by agents demanding money for its release. Other participants in this network include Cypherpunks who educate people to use public-key cryptography to protect the privacy of their messages from corporate or governmental snooping and programmers who write free software and open source code. Still others create Free-Nets allowing users to gain access to computer resources for which they would otherwise need an account. They might also break copyright law etc. by swapping music, movies, or other copyrighted materials over the Internet.
Bradley Manning is alleged to have said "Information should be free" to Adrian Lamo when explaining a rationale for US government documents to be released to WikiLeaks. The narrative goes on with Manning wondering if he is a "'hacker', 'cracker', 'hacktivist', 'leaker' or what".
Read more about this topic: Information Wants To Be Free