I am guessing that the two biggest goals of a copyright holder are money and fame. There is a difference between releasing the copyright and making the material available for free. In today's world, one's online identity, email address, name, etc. are valuable and it is not unknown for people to supply a free copy of material IF one "registers" one's identify information. I got on to this topic from the O'Reilley Radar post by Nat Torkington that mentioned a talk given recently in Berlin on why all general purpose computers could be a target for those who want to hold tight to copyright.
As far as I can tell, the fascination with "free" as a price point is quite widespread. The book by Chris Anderson, an high-level editor at Wired, "Free: the Future of a Radical Price Point" (2009) give this example of what can happen when things are free. This is a notice from the comedy group called Monty Python
"For 3 years you YouTubers have been ripping us off, taking tens of thousands of our videos and putting them on YouTube. Now the tables are turned. It's time for us to take matters into our own hands. We know who you are, we know where you live and we could come after you in ways too horrible to tell. But being the extraordinarily nice chaps we are, we've figured a better way to get our own back: We've launched our own Monty Python channel on YouTube. No more of those crap quality videos you've been posting. We're giving you the real thing—high quality videos delivered straight from our vault. What's more, we're taking our most viewed clips and uploading brand new high quality versions. And what's even more, we're letting you see absolutely everything for free. So there! But we want something in return. None of your driveling, mindless comments. Instead, we want you to click on the links, buy our movies & TV shows and soften our pain and disgust at being ripped off all these years."
Anderson continues:
Three months later, the results of this rash experiment with free were in. Monty Python's DVDs had climbed to No. 2 on Amazon's Movies and TV best-sellers list, with increased sales of 23,000 percent.
Anderson, Chris (2009-06-22). Free: The Future of a Radical Price (pp. 1-2). Hyperion. Kindle Edition.
Similarly, the book "Confessions of a GP" sold 8500 copies on paper in Britain but 100,000 copies in Kindle format.
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Bill
Main blog: Fear, Fun and Filoz
Main web site: Kirbyvariety
