The Economist has weighed in on the music industry story. I love their opening paragraph:

IN 2006 EMI, the world’s fourth-biggest recorded-music company, invited some teenagers into its headquarters in London to talk to its top managers about their listening habits. At the end of the session the EMI bosses thanked them for their comments and told them to help themselves to a big pile of CDs sitting on a table. But none of the teens took any of the CDs, even though they were free. “That was the moment we realised the game was completely up,” says a person who was there.

(Hat tip to Tim Anderson).

Scary stuff, though fortunately I can’t yet see a situation where you could put a pile of free books out at Worldcon and no one would take one. And not only because most people at Worldcon haven’t been teenagers for several decades.