How The Copyright Gap Harms The Content Delivery Industry
from the interesting-theories... dept
Tim Wu is subbing for Lawrence Lessig on his own blog, and comes up with an interesting theory about how different forms of regulation impact the telephony and content industries in different ways — something he labels as a “copyright gap.” Basically, the argument is that the government seems to favor new entrants in the telecom world, which has created success stories like Vonage and Skype, where they can come up with new innovations in order to compete, without (for the most part) worrying about government regulations holding them back. However, in the content industry, government regulations tend towards favoring the incumbents heavily, such that companies need to ask permission to innovate, because the content industry has somehow convinced politicians that any innovation will completely destroy, rather than reinvent the industry. It’s for this reason that Wu believes VoIP and email have succeeded while interactive TV and internet libraries have faltered.
