Under Construction
Among the forthcoming discussions:

	Net Neutrality
	Copyright & User-Generated Content
	Software & the GPL
	Innovation & the International Scene
	Cable Mandates
	Competition Policy as Uncreative Destruction
	Spectrum Issues
	Patent Reform
	Financial Regulation & Innovation
	Prisoners' Dilemma & Public Policy

	Our new digital economy, Washington Times, Jan. 13, 2008
	Google the Destroyer, TCSDaily, Jan. 07, 2008
	The World Is Round: How To Think About Foreign Investment in the US, TCSDaily, Nov. 21, 2007
	A Chill Wind For Innovation: European Court’s Ruling Imperils High-Tech Economy, Washington Legal Foundation, Oct. 19, 2007

REGULATORY POLICY

In ["What's_Your_Regulatory_Policy?"_TCS_Daily, June 18, 2008,] CLI Adjunct Scholar Solveig Singleton says that troubled financial markets, concerns about network neutrality, and aggressive trustbusters are triggering new calls for government regulation. But, she argues, "Before embracing new regulatory panaceas, it would be wise to revisit the reasons why we rejected the old ones just a few years ago."

Dedication to deregulation is on the wane, but few ideas on how to improve the regulatory process have been put forward, which makes it likely that new regulatory schemes will repeat the dysfunctions of the old.

When markets fail, says Singleton, they tend to self-correct, often through simple Darwinism. "Poor investors and badly run businesses lose (their own) money until they go under. Technology and other factors that bring change keep even established firms on their toes."

For regulatory failures, "In contrast, self-correction is not a common response to.... There is no good explanation for how an agency or a system of rules can be designed to systematically succeed or self-correct."

Singleton's conclusion: "Some technologists are alarmed that so few presidential candidates have a technology policy. But it is even more alarming that none of them have a regulatory policy."

The article is reprinted at [TCS Daily].

ORPHAN WORKS

James DeLong argues in C\Net News (May 20, 2008) (Orphan Works: Half a loaf), that the pending bills are good, but that aggregators are going to need more leeway:

"These possible-orphan, sort-of-orphan, and gray literature works simply cannot be made available if the digitizers are required to make one-by-one judgments and seek permission before copying. If they are to be retrieved in useful form, then sooner or later Google, Amazon, Microsoft, and some others must be permitted to digitize on a massive scale."

For a version with links, go here.

NETWORK & PLATFORM COMPANIES

May 08, 2008

James DeLong's article "Avoiding a Tech Train Wreck," which looks at issues surrounding network and platform companies (e.g., Net Neutrality; Windows complements), is out in THE AMERICAN. The press release, which serves as an Executive Summary, is linked below.

Anyone interested in these issues (a taste acquired only by a select group), should find it interesting.

James V. DeLong, "Avoiding a Tech Train Wreck," THE AMERICAN, May/June 2008

For a version with hyperlinks: "Avoiding a Tech Train Wreck" [LINKED VERSION]

Press Release

REGULATORS AND THE FINANCIAL CRISIS

James DeLong has some thoughts. (Read More)

LONG-TERM COLLABORATION

Kyle D. Dixon and Raymond L. Gifford, "Complementing Advocacy with Private Trust Systems and other Long-Term Collaboration," March 2008 [PDF]

NETWORK NEUTRALITY & TRAFFIC MANAGEMENT

Net Neutrality is the Terminator of telecom - no matter now many hits it takes, it gets up and keeps coming at you. The latest round is the FCC decision, in response to petitions from NN advocates, to investigate Comcast's network management practices concerning treatment of P2P. Last week, Comcast agreed to work with BitTorrent on the issue, and it is not clear whether the FCC probe will continue. [Read More]

FINANCIAL REGULATION

The Treasury Department issued its Blueprint for a Modernized Financial Regulatory Structure, the latest step in its Capital Markets Competitiveness review. Secretary Paulson characterized it as "aspirational" - an attempt at a clean-sheet redesign - as representing "a regulatory model based on objectives, to more closerly link the regulatory structure to the reasons why we regulate." [Read More]

PATENT REFORM

S.1145 is pending, and pending, and pending ... Clearly, if there were 60 votes for closure, it would have happened, so the "next month" mantra grows dubious. There seems to be little progress on the substantive disagreements.

See also ... ... a CLI project on Intellectual Property

About Convergence Law Institute

The Convergence Law Institute, LLC (CLI) is a consulting firm that helps its clients develop and present strategies and arguments on current public policy issues.

CLI’s work is based on the principles that the institutions of property rights and markets are essential to continued economic and technological development, in the U.S. and world-wide. We seek clients whose business strategies embrace these views. We have been described as "a private think tank."

The name "Convergence Law" comes from the reality that services that were once separate — voice, video, data, even the electric grid — are converging into streams of bits on public and private Internet-protocol based platforms.

As a result, familiar legal and policy categories that developed under earlier technologies are losing their coherence, with dramatic effect on the rules governing competition, intellectual property, telecommunications, media, and financial services. Both public and private organizations must rethink policies, rules, and institutional mechanisms.

CLI is affiliated with the Washington, DC, office of the law firm of Kamlet Shepherd & Reichert, LLP, which is based in Denver.