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290 economic, technical, or military reasons. In addition, there is prestige involved; all high-tech countries will pour resources into gleaning alien information.* The detecting nation might choose not to share information with others, at least initially. Later revelation of such decisions could provoke mistrust, encouraging other countries to act independently in communicating with the detected civilization. Governments are not the only bodies that could be tight with informa- tion. A nongovernmental organization that detected extraterrestrial intel- ligence might not play by the rules followed by most SETI researchers. Such a group could choose to withhold or limit the release of information, considering how it might best be exploited. Those personally involved in the first contact might be possessive about the information and the channel, particularly if they distrusted governments and held a low opinion of the general population. Entrepreneurs might compete to get first access to alien ideas and to monopolize those with commercial value. As private sources fund more of the search, warned White, we have to ask what happens if an entrepreneur or corporation invests millions of dollars in SETI specifically to market the information generated by a search.” Mind-Stretcher. If the first organization to crack the alien code were a company or profit-minded university, that institution might seek to patent the intellectual property derived from its discovery, charging a fee for access to their findings. The precedent has been set: Government authori- ties have allowed the patenting of genes found in nature, including 20% of human genes.* It could be argued that a signal found through an astronomical search is a comparable discovery. If a signal is information-rich, receiving, interpreting, and disseminating that information could be a major enterprise, possibly requiring new insti- tutional arrangements. Some believe that decoding a message will be a task of years, decades, even generations. Such lengthy, detailed examinations could mean long delays in the complete release of information to the public. The full contents of the Dead Sea scrolls were not published until 54 years after their discovery.” As control over this information could offer great power as well as high status, there would be a strong temptation to monopolize the channel and limit access by others. Harrison warned of “gate-keepers” who decide if information should be released or suppressed; this could apply at both ends of the communication process.” Our history contains many examples of priesthoods mediating between the heavens and ordinary mortals. In early agricultural societies, knowl- edge of the movements of the Sun, Moon, stars, and planets provided a Assumptions: After Contact