Tag: Competition
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The Next Step towards an Open Internet
Now that the FCC has finally acted to safeguard network neutrality, the time has come to take the next step toward creating a level playing field on the rest of the Information Superhighway. Network neutrality rules are designed to ensure that large telecommunications companies do not squelch free speech and online innovation. However, it is…
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iPad: The Disneyland of Computers
Tech commentators have a love/hate relationship with Apple’s new iPad. Those who try it tend to like it, but many dislike its locked-down App Store which only allows Apple-approved apps. Some people even see the iPad as the dawn of a new relationship between people and computers. To me, the iPad is Disneyland. I like…
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TV Everywhere: Collusion Anywhere?
FreePress and the National Cable and Telecom Association (NCTA) are talking past each other about TV Everywhere, a new initiative from the cable TV industry. FreePress says TV Everywhere is the cable industry’s collusive attempt to limit competition; the NCTA says it’s an exciting new product opportunity for consumers. Let’s unpack this issue and see…
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New York AG Files Antitrust Suit Against Intel
Yesterday, New York’s state Attorney General filed what could turn out to be a major antitrust suit against Intel. The suit accuses Intel of taking illegal steps to exclude a competitor, AMD, from the market. All we have so far is the NYAG’s complaint, which tells one side of the case. Intel will have ample…
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iPhone Apps: Apple Picks a Little, Talks a Little
Last week Apple, in an incident destined for the textbooks, rejected an iPhone app called Eucalyptus, which lets you download and read classic public-domain books from Project Gutenberg. The rejection meant that nobody could download or use the app (without jailbreaking their phone). Apple’s rationale? Some of the books, in Apple’s view, were inappropriate. Apple’s…
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European Antitrust Fines Against Intel: Possibly Justified
Last week the European Commission competition authorities charged Intel with anticompetitive behavior in the market for microprocessor chips, and levied a €1.06 billion ($1.45 billion) fine on the company. Some commentators attacked the ruling as ridiculous on its face. I disagree. Let me explain why the European action, though not conclusively justified at this point,…
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Cheap CAPTCHA Solving Changes the Security Game
ZDNet’s “Zero Day” blog has an interesting post on the gray-market economy in solving CAPTCHAs. CAPTCHAs are those online tests that ask you to type in a sequence of characters from a hard-to-read image. By doing this, you prove that you’re a real person and not an automated bot – the assumption being that bots…
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iPhone Apps Show Industry the Benefits of Openness
Today’s New York Times reports on the impact of Apple’s decision to allow third-party application software on the iPhone: In the first 10 days after Apple opened its App Store for the iPhone, consumers downloaded more than 25 million applications, ranging from games like Super Monkey Ball to tools like New York City subway maps.…
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Government Data and the Invisible Hand
David Robinson, Harlan Yu, Bill Zeller, and I have a new paper about how to use infotech to make government more transparent. We make specific suggestions, some of them counter-intuitive, about how to make this happen. The final version of our paper will appear in the Fall issue of the Yale Journal of Law and…
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The Microsoft Case: The Second Browser War
Today I’ll wrap up my series of posts looking back at the Microsoft Case, by looking at the Second Browser War that is now heating up. The First Browser War, of course, started in the mid-1990s with the rise of Netscape and its Navigator browser. Microsoft was slow to spot the importance the Web and…