For Some, Even "Free" is Too Expensive

I’m showing my age here, but when I was in ninth grade, the once-mighty Metallica held a free listening party on the cusp of the release for their now-legendary “black album” (the real title of the CD simply being Metallica). The free listening party was held at New York’s Madison Square Garden, but even though no one had to pay a single cent to enter and be blown away by the new offering from a band that had turned into American metal icons by the late-1980s, people still complained.

Some were upset because even though they had a chance to hear a new CD for free, the band didn’t play for free.

I mention this story because I noticed it happen yet again on a Website called Scribd. Scribd is a bit like Issuu in that any Joe Sixpack with a PDF converter can make their own e-magazine or e-book and upload it for the world to see—for free. However, I quickly noticed that “free” isn’t free “enough” for many readers. They want all of Scribd’s books to be downloadable in the format of their choice. Hell, they probably want it to be brought to them in a leather-bound edition on a silver platter.

Such was the case when I clicked on the Scribd page for Chris Anderson’s controversial book Free: The Future of a Radical Price. Comments left on the Scribd page for Free called Anderson a hypocrite because it was only viewable on Scribd’s embedded browser; readers couldn’t download it or print it. Therefore—they somehow reasoned—the book wasn’t “free.” For them, reading it on the Internet was costing them in some way.

Others refer to Anderson’s book on Scribd as a bait-and-switch scheme; one calls it “false advertising” (since Anderson’s book is about making information available for free, which he does here); one commenter goes so far as to suggest that his/her “freedom” is being limited simply because he/she has to read the book online. Few seem to understand that the information itself is being given out for free; the majority want it to be delivered their way for free. Give it a few more weeks and we’ll no doubt have people calling for a free movie version of the book so they don’t have to actually read anything.

This is the case in America today. We’ve turned into a bunch of spoiled, selfish, self-absorbed, narcissistic fat-asses who can be given an inch and then want a mile.

And I won’t charge you for this bit of information.

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