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Computing is free. The world’s most powerful computer is free (SETI@Home is a 54-teraflop machine). Google freely provides a trillion searches per year to the world’s largest online database (two petabytes). Hotmail freely carries a trillion e-mail messages per year. Amazon.com offers a free book-search tool. Many sites offer free news and other free content. Movies, sports events, concerts, and entertainment are freely available via television.
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Jim Gray (2008) studied this question.
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