86 Geo. Wash. L. Rev. 513
The task is urgent: the Myth of Free is not benign. It has misled courts into granting protected legal status to Free-product suppliers in cases ranging from contract disputes to antitrust and privacy litigation. It has also motivated policy proposals that call for eliminating market interventions—or competitive markets themselves—without adequate justification in either case. Moreover, policies designed for a post-scarcity world necessarily overlook the persistent problems attendant to scarcity, thereby creating substantial allocative inefficiencies. This Article seeks to dispel the Myth of Free before it can wreak further harm to societal welfare and the rule of law.
