Who Profits from "Free"?

So everyone agrees these days: Hooray for pirates! Art and culture (or, more discouragingly, "content") should be free. Techno-utopians of the left and right envision a future in which everything ever made is accessible, at no cost, with a click of a button. Those who think "free" as in speech envision a new digital order offering an inclusive cultural commons and mass enlightenment through access to information; those who think "free" as in beer merely see a cheaper way to get rich. "Just because products are free doesn't mean that someone, somewhere isn't making huge gobs of money," Chris Anderson gushed...

...And creative types should be grateful to him. They won't be the ones making those "huge gobs of money," but at least they will have been liberated from the tyranny of making a living from their art. Finally their souls will be unsullied!

Notes:

Capitalists love all this free stuff online, they get to make so much money off of it. I do appreciate the irony of me attempting to do the same with MemexPlex.

Folksonomies: creative commons

Taxonomies:
/business and industrial (0.533552)
/shopping/gifts (0.500413)
/automotive and vehicles/minivan (0.499012)

Keywords:
huge gobs (0.941661 (negative:-0.390338)), inclusive cultural commons (0.902022 (positive:0.453301)), new digital order (0.869990 (positive:0.453301)), right envision (0.718046 (positive:0.501861)), cheaper way (0.680870 (positive:0.608312)), mass enlightenment (0.669886 (positive:0.453301)), creative types (0.654517 (positive:0.649794)), Chris Anderson (0.646635 (neutral:0.000000)), free doesn\'t (0.634980 (neutral:0.000000)), Hooray (0.497658 (positive:0.501106)), art (0.496275 (negative:-0.007902)), money (0.481017 (negative:-0.390338)), pirates (0.470024 (positive:0.501106)), tyranny (0.469172 (negative:-0.400777)), souls (0.460768 (positive:0.547975)), button (0.459809 (negative:-0.404800)), click (0.455434 (negative:-0.404800)), culture (0.452431 (positive:0.392875)), content\ (0.452182 (neutral:0.000000)), ones (0.450172 (negative:-0.434409)), Techno-utopians (0.449703 (positive:0.501861)), future (0.449465 (positive:0.501861)), cost (0.449137 (negative:-0.315098)), speech (0.447978 (positive:0.453301)), access (0.447537 (positive:0.453301)), information (0.447479 (positive:0.453301)), beer (0.447155 (positive:0.608312))

Entities:
Chris Anderson:Person (0.774300 (positive:0.649794))

Serfing the Net

Periodicals>Journal Article: Taylor, Astra (2010), Serfing the Net, The Baffler Literary Magazine, Vol 2, No. 01, Chicago, IL, Retrieved on -0001-11-30