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“I Blew It on Microsoft” Lawrence Lessig

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Wired: I Blew It on Microsoft Lawrence Lessig

That behavior [Microsoft's Business Model], the government had charged, chilled competitive innovation. A reluctant DOJ concluded that the only solution was a lawsuit. How else, Microsoft's competitors asked, could the software giant be restrained? If not by the US government, then by whom?

…….

I was one of those reluctant regulators. As the evidence of Microsoft's practices became clear, I remember well thinking, "Of course the government needs to do something." And I remember very well the universal impatience with the notion that the market would solve the problem. How could it, when any other company was likely to behave just as Microsoft did?

We pro-regulators were making an assumption that history has shown to be completely false: That something as complex as an OS has to be built by a commercial entity. Only crazies imagined that volunteers outside the control of a corporation could successfully create a system over which no one had exclusive command. We knew those crazies. They worked on something called Linux.

I wanted to believe that Linux would prevail. But I'm a lawyer, and lawyers aren't programmed to see how profitable innovation might happen without commercial control. I didn't like the idea of regulation; I just didn't see any alternative. The suits would always beat the rebels. Isn't that why they were so rich?

I think about this mistake whenever I think about the current Microsoft-like network-neutrality debate….

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Will these grassroots alternatives check the power of the big companies? I remain skeptical. But the frantic efforts of traditional broadband providers to persuade states to ban municipal broadband should give you some clue as to the potential of these services.

Those who oppose network-neutrality regulation should also oppose this regulation of last-mile broadband's most important competitor. Municipal competition won't kill commercial broadband any more than Linux has killed Windows. Yet it could change the business model of last-mile broadband, just as Linux has changed the business model of Microsoft. If there's going to be a Linux-like miracle to counteract innovation-threatening broadband business models, then, at a minimum, miracles must not be a crime.

Comments

2 responses to ““I Blew It on Microsoft” Lawrence Lessig”

  1. Doug Thompson Avatar
    Doug Thompson

    “If Microsoft fails to keep pace with technological change and is outstripped by its competitors, let it be because we failed to innovate fast enough, not because we were hobbled by government intervention…”
    – Bill Gates to Sen. Hatch on the Senate Judiciary Committee, March 3, 1998

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    It’s too little, too late, Mr. Lessig (and I’m sure you’ll pick this up from the Google search you run on yourself every day).
    The courts were right to remove you as Special Master on the Microsoft case for shooting off your mouth, and now, you are right to say that you were wrong. Never mind Gates; I didn’t hear any apology to the Microsoft employees in your missive, however.
    The untold damage you and your ilk (like Boies, another gilded-age attorney like yourself who has fallen hard from his perch on the pedestal) have done to savage the computer industry–your realization is pathetic and too late. You let the governmental regulatory dragon out of the cave, nay, egged it on, and now it has Apple in its sights and will set to dismantling that great company as its next magical trick.
    I look forward in bittersweet fashion as to what you’re going to say on the day when Linux legislation is proposed and then is as heavily regulated as Microsoft is now. Because, regulatory bureaucrats will say, its anarchical nature requires parental supervision, and the easy ability within the Linux world to use its free distribution methods to send a viral payload into a great number of computers. We had a right to regulate Microsoft’s Windows, they will say, just as we have the right to regulate Linux now. By the way, they’ll also say, we’d like to have a chat about the regulatory changes we need to make on this Creative Commons thing you have, too.
    Enjoy your thirty pieces of silver; your legacy is now assured. Hand a copy of this to Eliot Spitzer next time you see him.

    Reply
  2. Nate Avatar
    Nate

    Doug,
    Can you point to three markets Microsoft would have entered differently if it had not been for the Goverment’s regulation. This article makes a strong case that Microsoft has not recently dominated over any competitor outside of the core OS market.
    Microsoft’s lack of development of IE from 6 -> 7 should be an example of the fact that given a monopoly Microsoft _does not innovate_ and that is why they are loosing some money.

    Reply

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