Making the "Free" Business Model Work In a Tough Economy

Randy Savage writes "With venture capital on hold and advertising revenue down, the WSJ discusses where online business models might go. 'Over the past decade, we have built a country-sized economy online where the default price is zero — nothing, nada, zip. Digital goods — from music and video to Wikipedia — can be produced and distributed at virtually no marginal cost, and so, by the laws of economics, price has gone the same way, to $0.00. For the Google Generation, the Internet is the land of the free. '"

Comments

Re:Earth to businesses

[Aladrin]

"Pirates don't care about international borders, different launch dates for different countries, how old the content is, etc, etc."

It's precisely because they -do- care about that that creates the problem with piracy.

I know people outside the US that pirate for 2 main reasons:

1) Their country's version costs more than double what it would cost for me to buy it and ship it to them as a gift

2) Their country's version comes out 3-12 months after the US version

I think that was probably the point you were trying to make, but that isn't what you wrote.

As for why it still happens: Every country has different laws. That means different lawyers and different approval processes. In addition, as the EU stuff usually hits the entire EU at once, all those countries have to wait on the slowest one, while the US and JP releases don't have to wait on any other country. So they come out first in the easy locations, and the EU waits on their slowest members.