Reflecting on Jeff Brown’s post on economics, which in turn referenced an argument by Malcolm Galdwell, I made a short movie explicating the meme “information wants to be free.”
Cliff’s Notes: When a market good is so redundantly abundant as to be, essentially, ubiquitous and unavoidable, its market price will tend to plummet to zero. It doesn’t matter what the sellers of those goods might want to earn. All that matters, in this context, is what buyers are willing to pay. If the discounted probability of procuring an acceptable alternative is very high, then the price will tend to be very low.
Ordinary information is ubiquitous and unavoidable, and, therefore, the market price it can command is effectively zero. What the sellers or anyone else thinks about that is irrelevant. I have no reason to pay even a penny to you if I can get “just as good” next door for free.
That in turn references the very first post I wrote for BloodhoundBlog:
If almost-as-good is free or nearly free, what is the market value of slightly-better?
The answer? Almost always zero.
In the clip I talk about the difference in the paywalls of the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times. Ironically enough, there comes news this morning that the Times plans to finish off its slow suicide with yet another tilt at a paywall. Much good may it do them.
Here’s the video:
John Rowles says:
The etymology of the complete Stuart Brand quote can be foundhere. Good stuff.
The whole quote is:
“Information Wants To Be Free. Information also wants to be expensive. Information wants to be free because it has become so cheap to distribute, copy, and recombine—too cheap to meter. It wants to be expensive because it can be immeasurably valuable to the recipient. That tension will not go away. It leads to endless wrenching debate about price, copyright, ‘intellectual property’, the moral rightness of casual distribution, because each round of new devices makes the tension worse, not better.”
January 17, 2010 — 1:06 pm
Teri Lussier says:
>Ordinary information is ubiquitous and unavoidable, and, therefore, the market price it can command is effectively zero. What the sellers or anyone else thinks about that is irrelevant.
I avoid free webinars because the “cost”- the inevitable sales pitch- is entirely too high to me. I detest sales pitches and don’t have patience to sit through a webinar for information that is likely to be found elsewhere, bypassing the pitch.
And for me, this goes back to Eric Bramlett’s post and the extraordinary discussion that followed, about forcing registration to see the MLS.
What is the value of a Realtor?
January 17, 2010 — 2:19 pm
Ashlee Panell says:
There is lots of information out there that is free and should be free. Still there is other information that I think we as Realtors should be only to know. If everything were free, would we even have a job?
January 17, 2010 — 3:57 pm
Teri Lussier says:
>If everything were free, would we even have a job?
You offer service, contract experience, negotiation skills, knowledge. Knowledge, experience, skills, aren’t free, are they? That’s what we bring to the table. It’s valuable, I think.
January 17, 2010 — 6:35 pm
Richard Riccelli says:
Greg well done. You have all this exactly right. And so, too, your take on Gladwell’s tortured position.
From what little I know (owing to what I do for a living), while the Journal may indeed be making money online (along with, reputedly, the Economist and the FT) it is not much. And as we can see, Mr. Murdoch is busy and not with much success struggling to get the toothpaste–or at least the cavity fighting bit of it–back into the tube.
For those interested in a deeper look at what is actually a big idea, try this.
But for my money, Greg is a “slightly-better” choice.
January 18, 2010 — 8:44 am