Information wants to be free*

Blame human nature. As much as we intellectually appreciate openness, at the end of the day we favor the easiest path. We'll pay for convenience and reliability, which is why iTunes can sell songs for 99 cents despite the fact that they are out there, somewhere, in some form, for free. When you are young, you have more time than money, and LimeWire... See more

The internet turned everything into a commodity—now built on what economist Jeremy Rifkin calls “access relationships,” where “virtually all of our time is commodified” and “communications, communion, and commerce [are] indistinguishable.” Think of it like an open subscription loop, or peer-to-peer lifestyle funding. The next frontier is a world wh... See more

First, do we want to live in a world where people pay for content? I’m not sure. For one, it presumes the most valuable things should be closed, when the beauty of the web is that that zero marginal cost of production means the most valuable things should reach whomever they are relevant to.

Economics has historically focused on "goods" in the form of physical objects: production of food, manufacturing of widgets, buying and selling houses, and the like. Physical objects have some particular properties: they can be transferred, destroyed, bought and sold, but not copied... But on the internet, very different rules apply. Copying is che... See more