FREEconomics a la Monty Python!

So I did it! I bought more hard cover books… I can hardly wait till virtual books rule the world. Anyway, so I bought a book. It’s called ‘Free – the future of a radical price” by Chris Anderson. It’s friggin brilliant.



Chris looks at:

What is Free? The history and the psychology.

Digital Free! Too cheap to matter. Information wants to be free. Competing with free. De-monetization. The New Media Models. How big is the free economy?

Freeconomics. Econ 0000. Waste and why it can be good at times.

So what does this have to do with Monty Python? HAH! Chris illustrates the power of free witha Monty story.

November 2008! The remaining Monty Python team are stunned by the digital piracy of their videos. They took to YouTube and spelled out their grief:

“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 that 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 pushing. 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.”

Chris Anderson goes on to profile the results of this cool little approach…  buy the book to find out what happened. I’m really enjoying the book. I think you will too.

I just discovered that a very smart chap that I know from England, Graham Bower, is reading/has read this book  too… he shares his thoughts about the book here! (his analytical mind makes me somewhat green….)