Om Malik has a great roundup of the tragedy of the information commons debate stimulated by Jeff Jarvis
What if an infomation economy is necessarily deflationary?
“for information, although the tragedy of the commons has been removed, it means that all ground might as well be common. In the short term this all sounds great, all the things that the US is famous for, from Rock and Roll to Software become cheap and plentiful. Software necessarily becomes open source, the radio spectrum open and music free. But if food and clothing can’t become free and if it only pays for western economies to outsource unsubsidized production to poorer countries, then how do the domestic proletariat earn money to feed and cloth themselves?”