There has been a heated debate this week about free information, starting with Malcolm Gladwell's review of Chris Anderson's book Free , in which Galdwell argues that free "fuel" plus costly "infrastructure" results in net losses for companies like YouTube, which will lose a half a billion dollars in 2009, continuing with Seth Godin's assertion that free is the future , whether we like it or not, and eventually splintering into a whole bunch of blogs and comments about the benefits and peril