A series of recent business moves—including a September 19 decision by the New York Times to no longer collect a fee for online access to selected articles, Internet service provider AOL’s ongoing push to garner revenue from advertising instead of subscription fees, and musings by Wall Street Journal owner Rupert Murdoch about eliminating charges for its online edition—appear to have upended a favorite saying of economists: TANSTAAFL, or There Ain’t No such Thing As A Free Lunch. But some faculty at Emory University and its Goizueta Business School say the role of advertising, Internet-related technologies, and the free market will eventually settle the issue of who pays for what over the Internet.
In addition, faculty note that despite the shakeups that the Internet has brought to the marketplace, most companies—other than information providers—will likely be able to avoid getting wrapped up in the Internet’s so-called free-pricing model; a model that, they explain, is really not free after all.
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