More Fallout and Falling Out Over Net Neutrality
By Larry Downes on October 18, 2009 at 8:52 pm
The fallout continues from FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski’s promise to initiate new rulemaking to implement Net Neutrality principles promised by candidate Obama during the campaign.
The bottom line: what proponents wish with all their hearts was a simple matter of mom and apple pie (“play fair, work hard, and get ahead” as Craiglist’s Craig Newmark explains it) is in fact a fight for leverage among powerful interests in the communications, software, and media industries. Net neutrality, if nothing else, is turning out to be a complex technical problem—technical in both the engineering and regulatory sense.
For the gory details, see:
http://larrydownes.com/net-neutrality-debate-the-mistake-that-keeps-on-g... Read more about More Fallout and Falling Out Over Net Neutrality
IBM Back in the Antitrust Crosshairs: Deja Vu Mixed with Vertigo
By Larry Downes on October 9, 2009 at 4:34 pm
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/ Read more about IBM Back in the Antitrust Crosshairs: Deja Vu Mixed with Vertigo
PATRIOT Act: Last Refuge of Scoundrels
By Larry Downes on October 7, 2009 at 12:56 pm
“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/ Read more about PATRIOT Act: Last Refuge of Scoundrels
The End of the American Internet
By Larry Downes on October 5, 2009 at 3:59 pm
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/ Read more about The End of the American Internet
Horsemen of the Patent Apocalypse
By Larry Downes on October 2, 2009 at 3:27 pm
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/ Read more about Horsemen of the Patent Apocalypse