Mike –

I’m a long time open source guy, and someone who has entirely agreed with your arguments about how the world works.

But I think I’m changing my mind. Maybe it’s the moment – the economy’s bad, journalism’s worse – but I think not.

The longer and harder I look at my end of the problem – how do we pay for journalism? – the harder it is to justify the ‘infinite goods’ part of your argument.

If I get you correctly, (and I’ve read through most of your posts on the subject), you believe certain elements of a ‘product’ are essentially infinite – you can reproduce a song perfectly, as many times as you want, at almost no cost.

So the behavior that most correctly mirrors the real world of economic choices is one in which you give away that which is easy to give away, while recouping your costs in items that have scarcity – merch and tickets to concerts, and – more generally – ‘access.’

My first argument is – you increase the cost that has to be recouped doing it your way. If the musician does not recover his costs with the recording itself, he/she is then forced to recoup both his recording costs and the cost of the product that *is* being sold.

In some cases, those costs would be incidental. But in other cases, they would not, and you may need items that have non-incidental costs attached (access to the band) in order to make a living wage.

My second argument surveys the state of the world: while there are lots of ‘unsigned’ bands giving away their music on Facebook and the like, the decision they’re making is a temporary one, (they hope).

They need attention more than anything else, at this point. Importantly though, that need can change over time.

Established artists lead the way: the great jazz trumpeter Dave Douglas has his own label. He allows you to ‘subscribe’ to his work. He sells merch and promotes concerts. But other than samples, he does not give away his music.

Neither do the folks over at ArtistShare, who do sell the experience of vicariously paticipating in various music projects but who, again, give very little away.

To my knowledge, both are successful, and it seems to me they’ve identified the real scarcity behind the infinite goods – there’s only so much Dave Douglas, or Daid Byrne & Brian Eno or Maria Schneider to go around.

Now something important: even if your model is more correct than my objections, journalism – with its extremely short shelf life – may not be very amenable to the kind of cost capturing you’re talking about.

I can view my relationship with Dave Douglas as a long haul kind of thing; I may not have the same sort of attachment to a flurry of articles about what President Obama is doing – in fact, I may not be able to make a meaningful value distinction about all the articles on a particular day on particular topic.

My value may come from the way I think about *all* the articles, rather than me especially liking the New York Times day in and out, and thus making a decision to support the Times in particular.

Finally, a half-formed idea. Is it possible that ‘free’ breaks as a model in a bad economy? It’s counter-intuitive, but my thought is that what may make *free* work is less how it behaves in the market place, and more the fact that there’s enough *paid* going around to both help pay for things at the producer’s end, and to absorb the cost of the free riders.

Anyway, there’s more to be said, but this is too long already.

Best,

Scott Atkinson
Watertown NY