The Myth of Free

Can today's "smartest businesses" really profit by giving away their products for free? The digital revolution brought with it a flood of innovative new products, many of them supposedly offered to consumers free of charge. Silicon Valley emphasizes this dynamic wherever possible, with slogans like "It's free and always will be" and "Listen to free music you love."Tech analysts, economists, and legal scholars have created an origin story -- a myth -- meant to explain how these products became "free". Once digitization and networking converged (we are told), the marginal costs of production and distribution fell to zero. And, propelled by the magic of market competition, prices soon followed.But that myth is fatally flawed. This Article is the first to formalize and debunk the Myth of Free. The task is urgent: in cases ranging from contract disputes to privacy and antitrust litigation, courts and law-enforcement agencies have already begun to give favorable treatment to firms that purport to offer "free" products. By revising Free's origin story, this Article aims to prevent further harm to consumer welfare and the rule of law.