The last mile of IP economics

It occurs to me after rereading the Wired article The Long Tail and my earlier post on it that I overlooked the most obvious and interesting part. The end of the long tail is missing, forgotten, and un-addressed. The new economic frontier is not only in the "long tail" represented by "hybrid retailers" and "pure digital retailers" (pictured above), but in the last forgotten leg where the minimum threshold is nearly zero. In broadband connectivity this is called "the last mile". Usually the last mile is the most costly and the most complex, but that does not mean a marketplace for the last mile of intellectual property is impossible and indeed it may prove to be the most important part of the revolution.