Liberating The Concept Of Free

Three articles of similar interest sparked us this past weekend, and they all have to do with the universally-celebrated word, Free.

For one, Smart Mobs links to an article on WSJ describing that articles and reports of publicly-funded research studies will be accessible on America’s new publicly-accessible PubMed database. That’s bad news for academic and medical journals that are already battling rising costs, but very good news on the whole:

…barriers to the spread of information are bad for capitalism. The dissemination of knowledge is almost as crucial as the production of it for the creation of wealth, and knowledge (like people) can’t reproduce in isolation.

TechCrunch is hosting their own free-for-all party, showcasing videos of Charlie Rose interviewing Wired Mag Editor-in-Chief, Chris Anderson about the beneficial “economics of giving things away for free”, and of TechCrunch’s own Michael Arrington’s concept of net neutrality.

Lastly and sadly, the Guardian reminds us of how journalism isn’t so profitable for budding journalists anymore:

Thousands of students want to be journalists – and most still want to be print journalists. But they don’t buy papers; they’re used to getting their news free: from TV, radio, the net, the freesheets. News costs them nothing, but they still plan a career with steady salaries, mortgages and all accoutrements of modern existence. It makes no sense – even less so when your hear website editors (such as Anne Spackman at the Times) talk about the wizards she finds it most difficult to hire and most valuable when they’re on board: young men, not women, with high dexterity and innovation skills who are not recognisable journalists by trade. They are operators in short supply, and with few training courses to match their talent. They are not re-trained print people.