And notions of what consumers would pay for — and what they should even be asked to pay for — were turned on their heads. By early 1996 the media theorist (and former Grateful Dead lyricist) John Perry Barlow was writing in Wired that the optimal price for information in many cases was … free. “Most soft goods,” Barlow declared, “increase in value as they become more common. Familiarity is an important asset in the world of information. It may often be true that the best way to raise demand for your product is to give it away.”

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