Michael Marshall Smith is the best-selling author of Only Forward and The Straw Men , his next book Killer Move is out in July There's a sentence I find more infuriating than any other at the moment. It is: 'This should be free'. It drives me ****ing mental. I recently encountered it from an actual journalist, reviewing an iPhone app in a real, printed magazine. It's one thing for the cheapskate lamers out in knee-jerk land to claim something shouldn't cost (they resent paying for anything at all, be it software or a CD or an entire TV series), but when a writer in an exists-in-the-real-world publication does it, then I'm baffled. I'm at a loss to understand what moral authority is being leveraged to justify use of the word 'should'. I'm confused as to what person, institution or body of thought determines anyone 'should' give their work away for free, to people who will give nothing back, but instead whine about perceived imperfections in what they've been given.
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