But They Never Really Learn
Lawrence Lessig in Wired, via Reason's Hit and Run:
I was one of those reluctant regulators. As the evidence
of Microsoft's practices became clear, I remember well thinking, "Of
course the government needs to do something." And I remember very well
the universal impatience with the notion that the market would solve
the problem. How could it, when any other company was likely to behave
just as Microsoft did?We pro-regulators were making an
assumption that history has shown to be completely false: That
something as complex as an OS has to be built by a commercial entity.
Only crazies imagined that volunteers outside the control of a
corporation could successfully create a system over which no one had
exclusive command. We knew those crazies. They worked on something
called Linux.I wanted to believe that Linux would prevail. But
I'm a lawyer, and lawyers aren't programmed to see how profitable
innovation might happen without commercial control. I didn't like the
idea of regulation; I just didn't see any alternative. The suits would
always beat the rebels. Isn't that why they were so rich?
But they never really learn, do they, and Lessig is at it again with net neutrality. Both cases have in common that the issues have very little to do with consumers, and more to do with protecting other entrenched interests. (Sun and Netscape in the Microsoft case, Google and Yahoo in the case of AT&T and net neutrality).
