The author follows up The Long Tail by delving into the economics of free in the digital economy. One example is Flickr, which is able to present an ad-free environment to its basic users by offering premium services (enhanced storage and display options) with Flickr Pro, priced currently at $25 a year (26).
The decisions that I've made in reading and using Free provide a small illustration of how the new model works...I purchased the hardbound book, several weeks ago, at the Barnes and Noble in Spokane's Northtown Mall. I realized that all of the book is online. In purchasing Free, I obtained a copy that can be carried and read where there's sufficient light, and one that can be quickly annotated. Making the book available online didn't change the equation for me, at least at this point in time. (And it goes beyond making a book freely-available online: Lessig's Code v2 demonstrated the potential that digital/networking technologies have for content creation and distribution.)
Are there limits to free? In considering this question, I found the author's description of the Zappos service instructive. Even though customers don't pay the cost of shipping, many recognize that there is a cost ("an amorphous social and environmental cost"), which can deter them from ordering shoes from the online vendor in the first place (66).
In chapter 7, I think that readers will be interested in Microsoft's strategy in developing countries and its willingness to accept some level of piracy as part of a larger strategy of building users for its OS and tools. Anderson also describes how Microsoft Works enabled the company to compete with other low-cost productivity software options. I can still remember going to a CompUSA store in Rockville, Maryland and purchasing/installing an Office upgrade - based upon the fact that Works was preinstalled.
Anderson touches on the human costs of Free in the chapter on demonitization, and asks the key question: "Could Free, rather than making us all richer, instead make a few of us superrich?" (133). The best example is the toll that Craigslist has taken upon print newspapers, which relied heavily upon advertising revenue now lost to a tiny (in terms of number of employees) online service. There may be a broad societal benefit in demonitizing other sectors mentioned by the author (travel agencies, stockbrokers), but if the current high unemployment level in the US becomes permanent, double-digital structural unemployment, Anderson's assertion that this trend are a net plus ("in each case the winners far outnumber the losers") is questionable (131).
Chapter 13 made me think about storage costs and the fact that at WSU, there are sharp limits on available Outlook storage for faculty and staff. It's a long story, but somewhat similar to the situation described by Anderson in his Wired workspace...storage is cheap; storage is some specific contexts may not be. The context at WSU is a Microsoft Outlook system that supports unified messaging, calendaring, and the display of real-time availability information. But consistent with the author's take, it seems like there's a disconnect between what's possible with this service and actual storage prices.
Not central to the book, but...on page 76, Anderson includes a note on Lewis Strauss that really, in my view, misses the mark on Strauss' "too cheap to meter" prediction. I see the quote as based upon Strauss' view, as Atomic Energy Commission chair, of the likely impact of [pressurized water fission] nuclear power plants, like the Shippingport pressurized water reactor facilty - and not fusion.
Personally, I found Free more compelling than The Long Tail, perhaps because I waited so long to read Anderson's earlier best seller and had heard so much about The Long Tail prior to reading it.
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