> Finally, an American who talks as if he has a mind behind his mouth. Greg, a pleasure to hear your rebuttal.

Hmm, well, if I was in a basic anti-american mood, I'd reply "maybe that's because I'm actually NOT american". But I'm not (in a basic anti-american mood, not not american, is anyone still following? :D).

So I'm not american, but I'll not resent you for thinking so for this once.

And since I'm there posting again, I could add other examples of free things:

- Watching TV or listening to radio (accessing TV is not, but watching it generally is). Why? because producing the content costs, building the network costs, but broadcasting it to one person or everyone is the same, so adding customers is free => watching is free

- Driving roads. Why? Because building them is expensive, but once it's done, it costs almost nothing to have people riding them compared to leaving them unused. If you'd make people pay, less people would use them, which would be a shame and not optimal since they're here anyway. So using roads is free, but you pay for their building (and occasionnal rebuilding) via taxes.

- Tricky one: electricity in some tiny arab states. Why? because building the fuel burning station cost some money, but oil was so abundant that it cost basically nothing to produce the energy once the station was there. So taxes (burdening only foreign companies but that doesn't matter) were financing the building of the centrals, and then energy was free. Now that it is realized that, being in limited supply, oil is not really free, those states are making their population pay.

The last one is a very appropriate example because it shows two things:

- People there complain of the change. They want to keep it free because it used to be. They're wrong. For music, some people want to make it free because they're used to pirating it for free. They're wrong too. But they're wrong about the reason. Not necessarily about the conclusion.

- Things can change. Producing electricity there cost nothing, so the state managed to get it delivered for nothing. It's not true anymore, so it changes. Tracks used to be sold for a price, because it cost something, and there was no reason to complain about that. But now it costs nothing (and I'm careful to talk about tracks, not music production), and the people who can't see the difference just want to avoid spending some time thinking, and believe there's no reason things should change. Bad luck, there is, and for the better (better for the consumers AND the artists).

As a conclusion, I'd advise anyone who is both thinking there's no reason to stop paying music based on quantity and who is open-minded enough to try and realise he just might be wrong to look at economists papers, some appropriate keywords being "zero"+"marginal cost" or "non-rival"+"goods".

You should quickly find some articles that explain in more details than I did why things costless to produce (after an initial investment) should be given away for free if free-market economy is to be efficient.