French Lawmakers Trying To Regulate File Sharing Don't Know Much About It

from the required-classes dept

We've joked in the past that judges and politicians should be required to pass some sort of "class" on certain basic technology issues before they'll allowed to rule on lawsuits or create regulations having to do with technology. All too often we find that many of the problems created in the courts and legislatures are due to politicians simply not understanding technology. It looks like that's true around the world as well. Over in France, where politicians are pushing hard for a three strikes law, a reporter went and asked some politicians some basic questions to gauge their understanding of the technology in question -- and found that most had absolutely no clue. Combined with the fact that approximately 90% of people in a recent survey were against the law, and that the European Parliament has said any such law would be a violation of a user's civil rights, you have to wonder how politicians can possibly justify such a draconian law.

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Google, Too, Chooses Lobbying Over Competing

from the is-that-so-googley? dept

Microsoft's increasing regulatory headache from the European Commission concerns its Internet Explorer browser that comes standard with Windows. We've said before that this investigation is prima facie silly given the vibrant and increasing competition in the browser market, but it looks like things are just going to get worse for Microsoft. First, it was Mozilla deciding to complain that Microsoft was creating an unhealthy browser market by bundling IE with Windows. Now, Google is jumping onto the bandwagon and arguing that Microsoft's policy limits competition and harms innovation.

This is primarily problematic because the browser market is anything but uncompetitive. Firefox has created what is widely considered a better product, and, wouldn't you know it, gained considerable market share around the world (as high as 30% in some regions). More recently, Google introduced its own browser, Chrome, that launched to accolades and much user adoption. By introducing regulators into the browser market, these companies will all be distracted from providing users with the best possible product.

But what's even more confounding is Google's involvement. Obviously the company desires control of most browsers so it can set the defaults in its favor, but it is increasingly obvious that Google should not be bringing regulatory attention to the Internet -- especially when it comes to antitrust questions. Although claims of Google's "monopoly" are as specious as Internet Explorer's, making noise about antitrust is likely to come back and bite Google, especially given the rising number of political enemies they have.

Kevin Donovan is an expert at the Insight Community. To get insight and analysis from Kevin Donovan and other experts on challenges your company faces, click here.

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Disappointing: Mozilla Siding With Bogus EU Antitrust Action Against Microsoft

from the just-go-out-and-compete dept

Last month, it seemed silly that EU regulators were pursuing Microsoft for antitrust violations in the browser market for bundling IE. It was clear that some of the initial complaints had come from Opera -- an also-ran in the browser market. However, it seemed silly because there is vibrant and growing competition in the marketplace. Firefox has continued to grow its market share, and in the past few years we've seen new entrants in the browser market from Apple and Google -- both of whom have established small, but significant footholds.

So, it's especially disappointing to read that the Mozilla Foundation appears to be siding with the regulators, complaining about Microsoft's actions. Obviously, Mozilla is competing with Microsoft in this space, so at a first pass it may seem in their best interests to lobby the EU to punish Microsoft. But it's disingenuous to say the least. Mozilla got where it did because it competed effectively. It built a better, more secure browser that many people made the choice to support over IE. In fact, Firefox's chief architect, apparently unaware of what his "bosses" were cooking up, seems to have recently contradicted the Mozilla Foundation's new position, where he admitted that he couldn't see how anyone with a straight face could claim that Microsoft's ability to bundle created a monopoly, noting that Firefox's success in growing marketshare showed that making yourself "demonstrably better" worked. Oops.

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EU Regulators Can't Resist: Go After Microsoft For Antitrust Yet Again

from the punching-bag dept

Microsoft is becoming quite the antitrust punching bag over in Europe. After a years long fight concerning antitrust charges in Europe, Microsoft finally gave in and agreed to pay up. So, now the matter is over with, right? No, of course not. EU regulators are back at it, telling Microsoft that the company is probably violating antitrust laws by bundling Microsoft Internet Explorer with Windows. This seems like an odd issue to bring up now as there is increasing competition in the browser market. Firefox's marketshare has continued to climb. Google has entered the market with Chrome. Safari is gaining increasing life (in part due to the iPhone) and there are numerous other upstarts as well. The idea that Microsoft is somehow exerting undue influence on the browser market (a market that, for the most part, involves free software) seems rather odd. It seems to confirm the initial opinion that many had of the original antitrust lawsuit in the EU against Microsoft. It's more about a simple dislike for Microsoft than any actual antitrust violation.

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Real Regulators Aren't Magicians, And They Usually Screw Up

from the why-regulations-tend-not-to-work dept

Last week we noted that Larry Lessig wanted to get rid of the FCC, and replace it with an agency that was designed to get rid of regulations, rather than add them. As we noted, no matter what the good intentions of regulators who are tasked with deregulating, it's unlikely it would turn out that way. It wouldn't be long before lobbyists and corporate interests were able to turn the "deregulators" into regulators in their favor. Related to this, Tim Lee points us to a good old fashioned barn burning rant from Jim Harper that should be a must read for anyone who thinks that today's financial crisis shows why we need more regulation. Harper is responding to a conversation on a recent episode of Meet the Press where some commentators were discussing the Bernie Madoff fraud, and noting that it shows the need for "real regulators." Harper then points out that we have real regulators and those regulators fail, regularly. And that's the problem.

People who support increased regulations do so under the mistaken impression that such regulators do the right thing most of the time and are able to spot fraud and stop fraud. That's quite rare. What happens instead is that such regulators are very fallible, and often co-opted by the very industries they're supposed to be regulating. Real regulators don't work nearly as well as the imaginary perfect regulators we'd all like to see -- and they often give us a false sense of security. It's what makes people think that a scam like Madoff's couldn't happen. The "real regulators" were alerted to Madoff's questionable activity time and time again. The real regulators also stood by and didn't realize the extent of the problem in the mortgage market. It wasn't a lack of regulations that was the problem that resulted in the financial crisis -- it was the fact that people actually thought the regulators who were in place were protecting us from such a mess. Real regulators are a problem. Imaginary, platonic ideal regulators would be great, but they don't exist.

When regulators fail to address a problem ahead of time, when they regulate inefficiently, when they hand their rulemaking organs to the industries they are supposed to oversee, those are all the actions of real regulators. That's what you get with real regulation.

What Burnett meant when she called for a "real" regulator, of course, was "the regulator I can imagine." The regulators people imagine are foresighted, interested only in the public good, they're resistant to lobbying, and they run efficient organizations. But these characteristics are simply imaginary.

Watching discussions like these, you come to realize how legislation and regulation thrive on self-deception and the appeal to ego.

Thousands of people come to Washington and stay because they believe that they can design the ideal regulatory system. They think they know how to write a law or a regulation that works for everyone, that protects consumers, that doesn't pick winners and losers in the marketplace, that doesn't make the glaring errors that we see month in and month out on Sunday morning political shows.

(If only voters didn't elect the wrong guy. If only lobbyists didn't 'corrupt' the system. If only, if only, if only . . . .)

Alas, we're stuck with real regulators. They fail, and when people rely on them, the failures of regulation are magnified.

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