Blog Maverick: Free vs Freely Distributed

By Mark Cuban

With the publication of Chris Anderson’s new book Free, the discussion about the role of free, today and in the future has expanded. Articles from Malcom Gladwell in New Yorker, and Seth Godin discuss the various merits and challenges of Free. Is Free inevitable ? Is Free the beginning of the end ? Let me answer the question.

First of all, what we are experiencing right now is “Better Than Free”. The videos on Youtube, magazine articles, newspapers reports, anything that used to be analog that now is digital have a perceived value that is based on their legacy delivery. We value all those TV shows on Hulu highly because we assign a value to what we pay for cable or satellite. We assign a high perceived value to newspaper and magazine reports based on the years we spent paying for them. Anything that we paid for as recently as last year, that we now get free, of course we assign a value of more than free. That makes it worth the effort to find it for free. Because the effort is worth your time. You are getting something for nothing, who doesnt want that ?

Of course that is a challenge for those industries. Not only do they face the challenge of their former customers wanting their content for nothing, but they have the problem that their costs are based upon their ability to sell their content.

There in lies the problem for the free movement. The subsidies of pro content producers from the newspaper and magazine industries will disappear as those businesses contract significantly. What happens then ? (more)