ICT and ‘Free’ Culture. An Analysis of New Business Models for Cultural Goods on the Internet

Abstract

The technological breakthrough has induced fundamental changes in cultural industries, especially those producing informational goods, e.g. book and press publishing, television and radio production, film production, music recording or video games programming. As a consequence, the internet has seen a flooding of cultural goods accessible for free to nearly every internet user as well as a flourishing of new business models, where cultural products are distributed for free. The aim of the paper is to examine the economic effectiveness of ‘free’ business models proposed by Chris Anderson, in relation to the cultural industries mentioned above, as well as their possible influence on the ‘traditional’ part of these sectors.