Competition in the Digital Age
Yesterday, Google pivoted on self-driving cars. Yes, I know we don't normally describe established firms as 'pivoting' but the notion applies when the same core idea (in this case, autonomous vehicles) is reapplied to a different customer set. For the self-driving car, this moved from retrofitting existing cars to Google building its own new and …
Continue reading "Will regulators really hold back self-driving cars?"
Piracy is everywhere but in music artists' supply. That's the strong impression I get from the academic literature on the subject. There is evidence that piracy has reduced straight-up music sales revenue but overall it is unclear whether digitisation has impacted adversely on artist returns (because they make up losses with concert revenue and the …
Amazon.com, in its zeal to keep book prices low, is in a large fight with Hachette -- the smallest of New York's big 5 publishers. According to the NYT, it started with tactics to crimp Hachette's sales and has now apparently led to the removal of many Hachette books including, ironically, the paperback version of Brad …
Continue reading "How Hachette could fight back against Amazon"
We all know the issue with copyright and patent enforcement whereby some creative upstart uses some IP without permission only to be slapped down by the IP rights holder. And we all know that economics does not help us out much here to sort out what to do beyond: if you could just work out …
Continue reading "Income-contingent IP enforcement: Paying for your right to party"
For the last few weeks I have been working on a paper out of the notes I posted on weak and strong net neutrality. The paper is now done (at least as a working paper) and it seems appropriate to summarise its main findings as some were unexpected. The first finding is one that I had …
Continue reading "Net neutrality may be harder to achieve than we thought"
The recent interest in Net Neutrality has been spurred on by Netflix's fight with Comcast for a fast lane. The issue of whether a lack of access to a fast lane might stifle innovation is a big one (see here for an impassioned plea) but what I wanted to consider today was the more basic …
The New York Times Innovation Report that was "leaked" last week is a fascinating document. It covers the struggles the NYT is facing in many respects. Well, I say in many respects because while the report was at a solid level explaining trends with a few graphs one cannot help but wonder what is being made …
Apple are reportedly going to buy Beats Music for $3.2 billion; a number that would have been big news a year ago but is modest news today. Beats is a very interesting entrepreneurial story in of itself and I encourage people who want to know more to read this Inc piece from a couple of …
Continue reading "Speculating on Apple-Beats: It's the capabilities"
This is not strictly digitisation (well, not at all) but I thought I'd just point to a piece I put out today on using social pressure to solve the inequality problem by getting the rich to feel compelled to pay more taxes. Basically, the idea is that shining a light on contributions (even doing so …
Tim B. Lee has been writing an excellent series of posts on Net Neutrality at Vox. See here, here and here. The picture painted is of the structure of the previously decentralised internet in the US being a mess and one where those with some degree of power (in this case afforded by size) are …
Continue reading "A thousand cuts and the last mile problem"
Digitopoly 