"However, it is a fundamental economic principle that the cost of a good will approach the marginal cost of production."

This is fundamental to the economics of goods but it clearly doesn't hold for information. When I started researching this topic in 1995 it was exactly because I was stuck in that same discontinuity of understanding. Why were people paying for a CD that had a copy of an operating system they could download for free? A goods economist would, like you state, observe that the supply of such CD's was essentially infinite or at least very high, and the marginal cost of producing one very very low, so how could they maintain a market price that was probably 20x their marginal production cost? That price has a component that is clearly not described by classic economics, what was it? In that same store the cost of blank CDRs was pummelled relentlessly by the reduction in marginal production cost. From over $10/CDR disk when things started down to about $0.43/CDR. Why are they pummeled into the ground and not the Linux Distro of the week CDRs?

I started pulling on that thread a long time ago and haven't stopped. Starting with the question, "What gives information value?" Using what I've learned over the years it has helped me understand and analyze things like what does Google sell really? or Why do non-DRMed artistic products make more money than DRMed ones? Or why did CD sales fall faster after Napster shut down? Can you price awareness? Why did "Its a wonderful Life" enjoy greater success after its Copyright lapsed? Etc.

Right, it is clearly true that pure information has no marginal cost of production. This does not contradict anything I have said. If you think it does, I am afraid that the fault is with your own understanding.

>>> Realistically, digital goods should be "free."

> I'm afraid to have to say that your argument is tangential and somewhat misleading.

???

Fundamental principles of economics dictate that this situation will not happen naturally. The author is not needed to create copies, and therefore prior to the invention of copyright, no one had any conception that he should be compensated for each copy. It's not like he labored to make the copy himself. The guy turning the handle on the press sure isn't going to be easily persuaded that the author deserves a share of the fruits of that labor. On the other hand, we as humans do really like good books, plays, music, etc, and it is considered fair to most that if someone makes a really popular work, that he get some sort of additional compensation for that. Before the wide adoption of copyright, and even through to the end of the 19th century, copyright violation was common enough that "authorized editions" were still common. Gilbert and Sullivan's British copyright on their works was not respected in the United States. American theater companies copied G&S's work almost as soon as it was performed, but people still preferred going to authorized or licensed performances, at least if they had the option, so G&S (well, really Carte) did pretty well from licensing. I digress somewhat, but I would like to note that this is actually an argument for copyright, especially as the least-market-disturbing option. The right to officially monetize some creative work is sometimes valuable enough in and of itself for there to be a market for it, just not most of the time, and there wasn't any recourse if anyone didn't want to work out a licensing deal. This worked out pretty well because copying and distributing physical media was fairly easy to detect and punish, even if the idea of owning a particular idea was understood by most to be fairly absurd.

The other fundamental issue with copyright in the digital age is that the actual marginal cost of making a copy of Harry Potter is no longer that $8.30 in paper and ink, it's a number so close to zero as to be difficult to establish. Trying to argue for a digital copyright is as futile as arguing with the tide. Whether you or I like it or not, we are effectively in a post-copyright world, and nothing will bring the old world back -- it doesn't cost money to distribute media, so we can't give any part of those profits back to the artist. We need new business models, and as it happens, and as this article discusses, Netflix seems to be stepping up to the plate here in a big way. If you would like to actually articulate a position I am sure I would be interested in further debate rather than just having the opportunity to repeat myself in slightly different words.

It improves readability.