I’ve been thinking the blogosphere was worn out from overexposure—all of the good stuff eventually makes it to an edited publication, and when was the last time you read something really good on a blog anyway. But then here comes David Weinberger with a nugget of gold as big as your fist. He calls it freechasing, or free as in peanuts.
I’ll readily confess that I guess I never fully understood Stallman’s “free as in beer;” “free as in speech” argument because I could never keep the duality’s separate. They were kind of like magnets to me; turn them this way and they attract—flip ‘em over and they repel. Too confusing for my tiny brain. So here comes Weinberger with free as in peanuts and its so blindingly simple, even I can grok it in an instant.
Most good bars put out peanuts for the patrons. It’s a neighborly thing to do and it keeps the drinkers drinking. I’m sure the economists have some high-falutin’ word for the conviviality it engenders, but it’s just a kind gesture; one that gets repaid in multiples by the trade of the regulars. Nobody pays for the peanuts—and everyone would leave if they were asked to. Weinberger calls this freechasing, “it means taking for free items you value but that you wouldn’t have paid for.”
Educators should be able to freechase book chapters. As Weinberger points out, it’s in the authors’ long-term interest to have their work exposed to as many people as possible—maybe we’ll get ‘em on the next one. Music fanatics should be able to freechase music—they buy more then they freechase and chances are they expose themselves to things they later purchase. Weinberger, if I’m reading him correctly, is saying that the copyright jams are too tight and need a good loosening. And hello, that’s happening whether we like it or not, without fail, so we may as well just ride this particular pony the direction it’s going.
Which leads me to… Redhouse Records, a local purveyor of some of the best acoustic music on the planet. And Dwight Hobbes wrote a sweet cover story about the label in Pulse, a Twin Cities free weekly that’s starting to publish some surprisingly important work. Redhouse publishes music that I’m just about guaranteed to enjoy without considering whether or not I’ve heard of the artist. They’re selective and know their niche. Sort of like Poseidon Press was as an imprint of Simon & Schuster before it died or got subsumed or whatever happens to corporate imprints that go bump in the night. I’d read damn near anything they published. Except Red House is fiercely independent and the analogy sort of falls apart.
So, go ahead and freechase Greg Brown’s latest release, but remember the lesson for the day: drink in the independents and be sure to pay your bar tab on the way out.
0 responses. Comments closed for this article.