Stanford Center for Internet and Society

Sources cited by The New York Times indicate the U.S. Justice Department has once again opened an antitrust investigation against IBM.

Remember IBM?

The new investigation concerns allegations that the company has refused to license mainframe software products to third parties. A refusal to license isn’t necessarily an illegal form of competition, but may be if coupled with other anticompetitive practices.

IBM has come under the gun from anticompetition regulators throughout its history.

Ironically, the case that it won did the most damage. In 1983, the government dropped an investigation that started in 1969. But by then IBM had already made significant and possibly life-altering modifications to its operations. See:

http://larrydownes.com/not-again-ibm-back-in-antitrust-crosshairs/

“Patriotism,” as Samuel Johnson famously said, “is the last refuge of a scoundrel.” In that sense, perhaps the USA PATRIOT Act is appropriately named after all.

In the immediate aftermath of 9/11, most people (though not everyone) agreed that the government should be given additional investigative powers to reduce the risk of more terrorist attacks. The fact that perfectly good intelligence was already available and ignored before 9/11 was considered water under the bridge. The attacks signaled a new era in national defense.

Electronic communications bore the brunt of government complaints that the enemy had outpaced the government in an information arms race, and not surprisingly some of the most contentious features of the PATRIOT Act involved provisions to expand government powers of surveillance, information collection, and secrecy:

http://larrydownes.com/the-patriot-act-last-refuge-of-scoundrels/

In 1998, all hell broke loose as the U.S. government considered how to govern the network it had created. That fight has now ended, with a whimper:

http://larrydownes.com/the-end-of-the-american-internet/

No one would seriously disagree with my observation that the patent system has become the single greatest obstacle to innovation faced by entrepreneurs and established companies alike.

Which is ironic, because the only reason the system exists at all is to encourage innovation.

In the U.S., patents have been around since 1790. Many would argue that the existence of this powerful but short-lived monopoly protection (originally only 14 years) given to inventors of novel and useful technology was crucial in America’s transformation from an agricultural to industrial economy.

Unfortunately, in the transformation from industrial to information economy, the system is showing both its age and the poor fit of many of the baubles and ornaments hung on it over the years by Congress and the courts. As I write in Law Eight of The Laws of Disruption, the unique economic properties of information call for a very different kind of incentive system, one that current information law doesn’t provide.

For more, see http://larrydownes.com/horsemen-of-the-patent-apocalypse/

It just gets worse...less than a week after the FCC Chairman calls for simple rules to enforce Net Neutrality, all the thieves have fallen out. Everyone thinks their view of the problem is simple and uncomplicated, and that those who understand it a different way are being intentionally confusing. No surprises here; this has been the modus operandi of the communications industry (whatever that means) and its regulators, lobbyists, and lawyers since 1974, when this fight really started. For the gory details, see http://larrydownes.com/the-net-neutrality-walk-of-shame/.

Stealing credit card numbers from corporate computers is a serious crime, but it is not "identity theft." Why does terminology matter? See below:

http://larrydownes.com/the-persistent-myths-of-identity-theft/

Net neutrality is back. Rather than rehash my earlier arguments against it, I point out a few relevant differences between the legislation proposed last time around and the proposed rulemaking described in Chairman Genachowski's speech today:

http://larrydownes.com/the-return-of-net-neutrality/

I made a lot of people in the Linux community unhappy when I wrote in CIO Insight ( "Battle over Linux: When a Win May Not Be a Win," Sept., 2007 ) that the decision by federal judge Dale Kimball to grant partial summary judgment to Novell on SCO's claims of ownership of key UNIX copyrights ha

I write extensively in Chapter 8 of my new book,The Laws of Disruption, about the madness of prosecuting Lori Drew, a Missouri woman, for her participation in a cruel MySpace hoax that contributed to the suicide of a 13 year-old girl named Megan Meier.

When is a comic book worth $3,600,000 more than its face value? Answer: When Walt Disney wants to buy it.