Sunday news is always a good time for pondering, rambling opinion pieces, and if the author knows the subject they discuss it's a bonus. Which is why I choose today to post about a book I've not read; "Free: The Future of a Radical Price: The Economics of Abundance and Why Zero Pricing Is Changing the Face of Business". Well, maybe I should clarify that so I don't sound completely stupid, this morning the BBC offered an interesting summary of various reviews and opinions from people who have read the book. And having clicked on the link fest (incidentally at time of writing the rather pivotal New Yorker link is broken, correct link here) and digested the many thoughts of these people I now feel qualified for an opinion myself. This is the internet after all.

So the premise of the book seems to be that by and large the developing generation(s) oppose paying for things that they can obtain for free. This doesn't seem like news, people have always had a general objection to paying for free. There are of course exceptions, but Free does seem to be a rather popular price point throughout history, bridging age, gander and race divides in a way that no other commercial idea has managed. Now having not read the book I realise I may be doing the author, Chris Anderson, a dis-service with that summary. Based on the things I have read a better summary is that society is re-evaluating the goods and services we expect to have a zero price point, but I'm not sure if that argument has been lost in the hype or never quite made so I'll do the other Internet favourite and claim the idea wholly as my own until someone corrects me (at which point I get to comment on the obvious illegitimacy of their birth and accuse them of a deep-seated love for whichever sexual act I presume will offer them the greatest shame).

Now, in an attempt to ensure you read the following through the appropriately tinted glasses, I'll point out here that I believe in general we as a society have accepted "free" for a number of things. I think the quotation marks are valid because I think that many of us accept the idea of paying for certain things indirectly. We listen to the radio or watch TV and pay for the content through the advertising. Yes, we can argue that TiVo and their ilk allow us to avoid the advertising but the reality is that we're demanding more respect from advertisers. On the Internet pop-up ads became sufficiently annoying that people went all out to block these abominations, now many of us accept little AdWord boxes and simple banner ads that don't flash or screech at us as a balance for not handing over a credit card to read an article. Some go further and block all advertising online, which I personally disagree with. I don't spend money at iTunes, I simply listen to the single advert every 30 minutes on Spotify. I still buy some music, but in general Spotify is a quicker, easier option for me. I watch most of my TV on-demand thanks to the wonderful services of the main channels in the UK.

Now aside from the fact that the BBC doesn't do adverts and I don't have much interested in the output from ITV of Channel5 I will say that I rarely skip the single ad on Channel 4's service. They need a greater range of advertisers as I do fade out after the umpteenth viewing, but I usually can't be bothered trying to bypass 28 seconds of commercial when I'm getting free, on-demand television. That works for me. Would I pay £10/month for the service? Probably not. Bizarrely I'd also expect this service to be advert free if I paid. Now I happily pay for a magazine which is partially funded by adverts, but it seems for my televisual needs I object, possibly because magazine ads are so easy to skip whereas TV ads rarely are. Magazine ads have to attract my attention, the junk they slap on the front of DVDs tend to be locked so I can't even skip to the main menu. This would appear to be the base of my objection. (And yes, I do watch good adverts from choice, only yesterday whilst skipping the commercials in a film time was taken to watch the current Pedigree Chum commercial with it's adorable border collie licking the camera.)

So yes, I've rambled long enough on roughly where I stand in the whole debate so let's start looking at the views of others, for at the moment this is just a self-indulgent blog post, by commenting on others I can become informative and insightful!

The main angle when discussing selling goods for free is that you then sell a service to support such a product. This is something I frequently find interesting, an idea which I basically understand yet struggle to see in the real world. Of course there are examples of it working but the reality is that the world is still very confused here. We can get free Internet access and complain at paying for the phone call to the helpdesk, then we spend £1000 on a flashy gadget and many will still pay for an extended warranty. Why the disconnect? Simply put it's the perception we have of the items we buy, and the expectations of service we associate with them. People hate paying for their ISP's helpline because little Timmy round the corner knows all about computers, people buy fairly redundant insurance for their expensive gadgets because they cost a lot to buy in the first place.

This is the disconnect which seems to be the struggle for selling for free. People assign a value of service to an expensive item. Do you honestly think the person who services your Lexus is that much more capable than the one who services your Toyota? They probably trained at the same place and use the same tools (half the time it's the same person), yet if you spent 2-3 times as much for your Lexus you'll probably pay 2-3 times as much to for the manpower to service it. Why? Because the Lexus is obviously a premium object which needs more care. Now if you could get a free car would you still pay Lexus service rates? Of course not, you'd feel ripped off and get the Toyota garage to take care of you instead.

Matt Penniman throws another disconnect into the mix when he suggests that Fun Work Could Mean Free Work. Now this suggests that the only service with value is no fun. We'll ignore that fact that you can probably find someone who will enjoy almost anything as they'll probably be in sufficiently low demand to make them negligible. Instead let us look at some of the services people pay big premium for; I have no doubt that Heston Blumenthal enjoys cooking, as do his staff I would suspect. The Tasting Menu at his restaurant costs £130 and even with norovirus hitting it earlier this year and recession gripping the nation he's not exactly looking out at a field of empty tables every night. I love cooking, my mum loves cooking, we'd both be there in a heartbeat. Maybe he's an unfair example because he's so far ahead of many of his peers but surely Matt isn't suggesting that restaurants will be staffed by unpaid chefs? Obviously the serving staff will be fully paid since it's far rarer to hear of someone with a love of waiting tables.

Would Madonna accept no fee for her concerts on the grounds that singing is fun? Any chance of that happening would probably vanish when you realise that the security team, the cleaners, and the ticket staff would all be paid for doing the less fun jobs. If anything society is moving away from these very business models, we now have things like professional sportsmen who earn more in a day than they would've earnt in a week when they had proper jobs as plumbers and the sport was indeed a hobby for them. If I wanted I could wander a few feet to watch a pub football team play for free, but like everyone else I see a premium in professional players. Just like I pay to watch Dustin Hoffman have the time of his life in a new film over the local amateur dramatics group put on their 23rd annual showing of Hamlet, for the love of treading the boards. People have being doing free fun for years but we're still paying a premium for those who do these things well.

Which brings us to the final stumbling block - we pay for style over substance. Now don't get me wrong, I think that some people make style part of their substance and they are worth the premium. I'd rather see a concert with someone who can perform like Freddie Mercury or Michael Jackson than identical sounds coming from an act like The Shadows doing their little four-step. Style does have value, but in today's society of user generated content and self-publicity it's too easy to generate style without any substance to it. A lot of Internet fame is a circular back patting and fan-style admiration for example, look at most groups offline and just like at school you'll probably find the popular kid is at the helm (either directly or pulling the strings of the real chair). Ask people in any of these groups carefully and you'll often find that someone else would be more capable at the actual job, it's just the person leading the charge was better at rallying support. Such behaviour has it's place, but ina service based economy? Not quite so likely.