For a creator more interested in attention than income, free makes sense. In a regime where most of the participants are charging, freeing your content gives you a competitive advantage. And, as the drunks say, you can't fall off the floor. Anyone offering content free gains an advantage that can't be beaten, only matched, because the competitive answer to free -- "I'll pay you to read my weblog!" -- is unsupportable over the long haul.
Who exactly is more interested in attention than income? Shirky says "authors with printing presses," but authors with printing presses have to eat too. Subfree pricing is unsupportable over the long haul, but I thought the whole point was that free pricing was unsupportable over the long haul, too. Fame is a good notion but I can't pay my phone bill with it.
Maybe it's just me. I know I've started having ideas that make me say, "I would do that if there were money in it," when before I would at least consider doing it. I'm still heavily subsidized by my parents, at that; they "pay for" what little I do still work on. Maybe it's inadvisible to share this with the Web, but I'm definitely worried I've trained into unemployability, even before I start looking for work in earnest.
I shouldn't read, "Everything's fine and roses here in postutopia!" into Shirky's piece--he's only saying why we can't compete with free--but it strikes a chord of fear in me that leaves me shaking my head.
