by Kevin Coates | Oct 16, 2013 | News from around the Web
From CPI RSS: Supplement to Platform Economics: The Economics of Multi-Sided Businesses “ (Click here for a PDF version of the article.) I’ve written the following articles on multi-sided platforms since the publication of Platform Economics: Essays on Multi-Sided Businesses in December 2011. Hopefully, you’ll find them useful. The first article, the “Antitrust Analysis of Multi-Sided Platforms,” provides a survey of the literature on multi-sided platforms that is relevant to competition policy through the end of 2012. The other three articles cover different aspects of multi-sided platforms. “Governing Bad Behavior” is about the use of rules and regulations by platforms to govern their communities. “Economics of Vertical Restraints for Multi-Sided Platforms” examines the pro-competitive and anti-competitive explanations for vertical restraints for platforms. “Attention Rivalry Among On Line Platforms” shows how seemingly different online platforms compete for harvesting consumer attention and selling this to advertisers. “The Antitrust Analysis of Multi-Sided Platform Businesses.” Roger Blair and Daniel Sokol, eds., Oxford Handbook on International Antitrust Economics, Oxford University Press, Forthcoming; University of Chicago Institute for Law & Economics Olin Research Paper No. 623. (With Richard Schmalensee.) This Chapter provides a survey of the economics literature on multi-sided platforms with particular focus on competition policy issues, including market definition, mergers, monopolization, and coordinated behavior. It provides a survey of the general industrial organization theory of multi-sided platforms and then considers various issues concerning the application of antitrust analysis to multi-sided platform businesses. It shows that it is not possible to know whether standard economic models, often relied on for antitrust analysis, apply to multi-sided platforms without explicitly considering the existence of multiple customer...
by Kevin Coates | Oct 13, 2013 | News from around the Web
From Who’s Competing?: The Laws of the Game – More on EU Law & DRM “There have been questions surrounding the legality of videogame console ‘modchips’ for many years. We may be about to see some authoritative answers for the first time as a number of cases come before the EU Courts. Two cases, stemming from legal actions instigated by Nintendo in Italy (Case C-355/12) and Germany (Case C-458/13), have...
by Kevin Coates | Oct 5, 2013 | News from around the Web
From Antitrust & Competition Policy Blog: FRAND in China “D. Daniel Sokol (Florida) and Wentong Zheng (Florida) have posted FRAND in China. ABSTRACT: This Essay discusses antitrust-related FRAND issues in China. In Part I, the Essay provides an overview of China’s antitrust regime and its interaction with intellectual...
by Kevin Coates | Oct 3, 2013 | News from around the Web
From Regulation Watch Feed: The changing role of collecting societies in the internet “ Collecting societies currently face major challenges stemming from: the reconfiguration of existing and emergence of new powerful players in the field of music distribution; the necessity of cross-territorial licensing options, and; the fragmentation of copyrights. This article presents an overview of recent technical and policy developments in this area in Europe and, on a more abstract level, it discusses structural problems underlying the policy conflicts. Collecting societies became indispensable intermediaries in the copyright system of the 20th century. Their core task was the collection of high-volume, low-value royalties stemming from secondary uses (e.g., broadcasting, public performance, lending) of creative works. Collecting societies are the solution to the problems that the individual creator – provided she/he is not among the small group of famous, top-selling artists – is confronted with, such as a weak bargaining position vis-à-vis broadcasters or online music platforms, and the fact that transaction costs for collecting small royalties from many users of her/his work (e.g., bars, clubs, discotheques) are generally too high (Mazziotti et al. 2009: 17 ff). In the field of music, the system of national collecting societies with monopolistic or quasi monopolistic positions always had its shortcomings. They are usually privileging top-selling artists and are not well suited to accommodate non-commercial music production and venues. But they provided a relatively stable and reliable framework for licensing musical works. As a result of the growing importance of the internet for the distribution and sale of music, this system of national collective rights management societies currently faces major challenges. The internet introduces...
by Kevin Coates | Oct 3, 2013 | News from around the Web
From Net neutrality in Europe: Net neutrality research and analysis: new paper “”
by Kevin Coates | Sep 24, 2013 | News from around the Web
From Regulation Watch – Feed of all News articles: Europe pushes rewind button on net neutrality “ The fight around net neutrality is far from over. In fact EU Commissioner Neelie Kroes’ recent presentation of her version of “net neutrality” in a draft regulation on a “connected continent“ resulted in an outcry on behalf of digital rights organisations. If passed unchanged, the new legal instrument would explicitly allow for deals between content providers and network operators about preferential treatment. Will countries like the Netherlands or Slovenia have to turn back the wheels on their strict net neutrality laws? The Council started talks on the regulation on September 20, according to the Council spokesperson for telecommunication, Paivikki Ala-Honkola. EU regulation Regulations are powerful instruments in the EU. They take immediate effect in all member states – as opposed to directives, which first have to be transposed into national laws allowing for considerable differences across the EU. Source: Wikipedia. There are a lot of provisions on transparency for bandwidth and speed in Kroes’ new draft regulation. Users would, with the help of regulators, be better off when it comes to monitoring the quality of their access network. Still, digital rights organisations and experts in net neutrality were not appeased. Freedom for everybody Although article 23 of the draft legislation focuses on the “freedom to provide and avail of open internet access, and reasonable traffic management,” it includes a clause that clears the way for preferential treatment of packets: for special offers to end users “providers of content, applications and services and providers of electronic communications to the public shall be free...