Hal Varian: belief

Transcript context

…Given how much the world has changed, do our intuitions about antitrust, in any way, need to change? The laws themselves haven’t changed, but obviously, court decisions evolve. But compared to 20 or 30 years ago, what more do we need to bring to that discussion? I think the existing legal infrastructure and antitrust in the US is pretty good. One of the things that’s very useful here is that the DOJ and the FTC put out guidelines, like the merger guidelines, the intellectual property guidelines, and so on. If you look at the situation in Europe, it’s a less mature system. They don’t provide you with those sorts of guidelines, so you’re flying in the dark to a larger degree. Why has copyright enforcement run so smoothly? And this reminds me a bit of the spam problem. So, the first Napster comes out. You think, “My goodness, no one will ever sell music again.” And I understand the price of streaming is much lower. In part, that’s due to competition from piracy. Yet it’s striking to me how few young people get most of their music from piracy.…

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