Better than Free (2008) (opens in new tab)

I find it interesting that he started the essay talking about trust as an example of something that can't be copied, but omits it from his 8 points.

I think it should be the very first point in his list. Trust in software is a thing that is increasingly lacking in the general population, and not without reasons. Being actually trustworthy is increasingly valuable.

Related (and mostly surprisingly sparse) threads:

Better Than Free (2008) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28129338 - Aug 2021 (3 comments)

Better Than Free (2008) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21165460 - Oct 2019 (5 comments)

Better than Free (2008) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14431233 - May 2017 (52 comments)

Better Than Free - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=500222 - March 2009 (1 comment)

Better Than Free - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=384848 - Dec 2008 (2 comments)

Better than free - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=108559 - Feb 2008 (6 comments)

One missed point is recourse.

When something goes wrong with a digital product and the problem needs to be resolved, you will only get help if you've paid and there is a business behind the product and a legal system in place to allow for recourse - getting your money back, resolving the problem etc.

If you downloaded that product for free, you have no recourse because there is no authority providing any service beyond the data itself.

> Ownership often sucks [...] Many people, me included, will be happy to have others tend our “possessions” by subscribing to them

Funny, I think the opposite.

> These eight qualities require a new skill set. Success in the free-copy world is not derived from the skills of distribution since the Great Copy Machine in the Sky takes care of that. Nor are legal skills surrounding Intellectual Property and Copyright very useful anymore. Nor are the skills of hoarding and scarcity. Rather, these new eight generatives demand an understanding of how abundance breeds a sharing mindset, how generosity is a business model, how vital it has become to cultivate and nurture qualities that can’t be replicated with a click of the mouse.

> In short, the money in this networked economy does not follow the path of the copies. Rather it follows the path of attention, and attention has its own circuits.

Well said!

Prescient comment on what becomes valuable when the cost of production essentially becomes irrelevant. Becoming more important as time passes.

    Once anything that can be copied is brought into contact with internet, it
    will be copied, and those copies never leave. Even a dog knows you can’t
    erase something once it’s flowed on the internet.

I wish people would stop repeating this trope. The internet does forget. Try pulling up any blog post or article that's more than two or three years old. Click on some of the links. How many of them are still up? Of the ones that are down, how many were saved by the Internet Archive?

The Internet is a copy machine, but often copies reside all in one branch of a tree standing in a walled garden, until someone comes along with an axe, chops that branch off and burns the wood.