A. Grunes, here.
Thursday, February 26, 2015
Why the Print Catalog Is Back in Style
HBR, here.
"instead of sending every customer his brand’s largest book, he looks for frequent website visitors and asks, 'Can I only send her 50 pages, or 20, as a reminder of, ‘Oh, I’ve got to go to the website’?”
"instead of sending every customer his brand’s largest book, he looks for frequent website visitors and asks, 'Can I only send her 50 pages, or 20, as a reminder of, ‘Oh, I’ve got to go to the website’?”
Wednesday, February 25, 2015
Unentgeldliche TV-Mitschnitte im Schulunterricht und an Universitäten
Petitionsausschuss des deutschen Bundestages, hier.
Tuesday, February 24, 2015
DOJ Is Right About Apple e-Books
WSJ, here (and below).
The Journal mischaracterizes the trial court’s ruling in the Justice Department’s antitrust case against Apple and five e-book publishers (“All Along the Apple Watchtower,” Review & Outlook, Feb. 17). Specifically, you say that the court found that “allowing consumers to read e-books on the iPad was an antitrust conspiracy.” Not so. The case was about agreements on a vital dimension of competition, namely price. It has long been a universally accepted proposition in both law and economics that agreements among competitors to set and regulate prices are anticompetitive. Thus, the court correctly found the agreements illegal. It is no justification that the agreements were intended to wrest control over the pricing of e-books from Amazon, the dominant player in e-book retailing.
Legitimate competition erodes a dominant firm’s position by offering consumers better prices or products. Here consumers received a worse deal. Indeed, the court found that the agreements led to an almost immediate 18% increase in the average price of e-books—hardly a boon to consumer welfare.
You are on more solid ground as regards the activities of the special master appointed to oversee Apple’s compliance with the verdict. (The publishers settled with DOJ before trial.) Even losing antitrust defendants deserve fairness and a reasonable post-verdict opportunity to show good faith efforts to comply with a court order. As you describe, there is ample evidence that this special master has overreached by placing burdens on Apple that are unnecessary to assuring adherence to the final judgment. As you urge, the Second Circuit should sack the special master or at least rein in his powers.
Theodore A. Gebhard
From social media service to advertising network
ICRI/CIR, in close cooperation with iMinds-SMIT, here.
An annotated guide to Facebook's privacy settings (that you've never read)
The Star and D. Fraser, here.
Monday, February 23, 2015
Model contracts for licensing interoperability information
P. Laurent and B. Jean for the European Commission
DG Communications Networks, Content &
Technology, here (pdf download).
C4C Supports the Balanced Approach Taken by MEP Reda and Explains Why
Copyright4creativity.eu, here.
Saturday, February 21, 2015
Google wins dismissal of U.S. lawsuit over Android app limits
Reuters.com, here. Order here.
Footnote 9: "At a higher level of abstraction, this means that those competitors who cannot access users are unable to improve their search algorithms, thereby impairing their ability to compete with Defendant on the merits of their respective search products... This is akin to the theory of Sherman Act § 2 monopoly maintenance described in Microsoft, 253 F.3d at 60-62, wherein Microsoft’s exclusive licensing terms prevented OEMs from promoting rival Internet browsers, thereby reducing rival browser usage and developer interest in those browsers, with the effect of maintaining developer focus on developing for Microsoft’s Windows operating system, which contributed to maintaining Microsoft’s monopoly over the market for operating systems" (emphasis added).
Footnote 9: "At a higher level of abstraction, this means that those competitors who cannot access users are unable to improve their search algorithms, thereby impairing their ability to compete with Defendant on the merits of their respective search products... This is akin to the theory of Sherman Act § 2 monopoly maintenance described in Microsoft, 253 F.3d at 60-62, wherein Microsoft’s exclusive licensing terms prevented OEMs from promoting rival Internet browsers, thereby reducing rival browser usage and developer interest in those browsers, with the effect of maintaining developer focus on developing for Microsoft’s Windows operating system, which contributed to maintaining Microsoft’s monopoly over the market for operating systems" (emphasis added).
Friday, February 20, 2015
Why the European Commission will not star in the Spanish TV rights Telenovela
B. Van Rompuy and O. van Maren, here.
Thursday, February 19, 2015
Interest group success in the European Union: When (and why) does business lose?
A. Dür, P. Bernhagen, D. Marshall, here.
Wednesday, February 18, 2015
Tuesday, February 17, 2015
Beginnings of the "more technological approach"
1998: "To meet Microsoft’s arguments about the integration of the operating system and the browser, Justice Department lawyers needed to understand how software programs were written...They needed to appreciate the technical characteristics of software code and design, something that Microsoft and its software engineers already understood", in A. Gavil, H. First, The Microsoft Antitrust Cases: Competition Policy for the Twenty-first Century, MIT Press, 2014. A terrific read, see here for a book review - with which I only partially agree, though. Contrary to the reviewer's opinion, I didn't miss the "drama" at all (read the footnotes!). Moreover, there are plenty of references to the economic underpinnings of the Microsoft cases (basically, network economics and the then nascent theory of two-sided markets). However, what I'd have liked to find in the book is also an in-depth discussion of the suitability of the economic theories that played a decisive role in the Microsoft cases for competition policy going forward (legal theories are already depicted by the authors as sufficiently flexible to cope with new challenges). For instance, how solid is the application barrier to entry argument likely to be in other high-tech markets such as mobile?
Why Xiaomi Worries Google
TheInformant, here (only partially accessible without subscription, but already very interesting).
Copyright and the Value of the Public Domain
K. Erickson, P. Heald, F. Homberg, M. Kretschmer and D. Mendis, here.
Monday, February 16, 2015
Consideration of Options for Open Data Licences
Irish Government Reform Unit, Department of Public Expenditure and Reform, here (Word file).
"Être un laboratoire d'idées sur des sujets que demain structureront notre économie"
L'excellent B. Lasserre, Vidéo ici.
Sunday, February 15, 2015
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Centre for a Digital Society , Video here . These are my very rough talking points on pay or okay in full length (more than I actually had...
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On 24 March 2004 the European Commission fined Microsoft for abuse of dominant position (H/T Lewis Crofts). 18 years (age of maturity) l... -
Report to the California Law Review Commission Antitrust Law: Study B-750, here .
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A. Blankertz, hier .
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CMA, here .
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Organized Money, here .
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InternetLab, here .
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Chalmermagne, here .