Randal C. Picker

Simple Games in a Complex World: A Generative Approach to the Adoption of Norms

Uncovering the boundaries of legal rules and defining their proper limits have traditionally vexed students of the law. When must we regulate? When will behavior coalesce in an appropriate way without the intervention of law? These are big questions, as the recent explosion of norms literature makes clear. I do not try to answer these questions here. Instead, I introduce a particular approach to examining these questions, stepping beyond the formal tools that law professors often use. Applying this methodology could ultimately produce a much richer feel for the possibilities and risks in these situations.

Pursuing a Remedy in Microsoft: The Declining Need for Centralized Coordination in a Networked World

In the pre-networked world, Windows played the central role in coordinating the sharing of software. The rise of the network changes how software should be distributed and changes the role of Windows in software coordination. There is less of a need for mandatory incorporation of software into Windows, as decentralized distribution and coordination is now possible. In impermissibly maintaining its monopoly, Microsoft distorted the channels for software distribution and added software to Windows for the purpose of raising the cost of distribution of rival software. Aproportionate Microsoft remedy should address that distributional distortion and seek to prevent future distortions. The article suggests such a remedy.

Entry Policy in Local Telecommunications: Iowa Utilities and Verizon

This paper offers legal and economic analysis of two recent Supreme Court decisions, AT&T Corporation v. Iowa Utilities Board and Verizon Communications v. FCC. The paper is written with two audiences in mind. For those unfamiliar with the cases, we offer what we hope is an accessible yet detailed account of the underlying policy issues raised by a legal regime that requires incumbent local telephone carriers to lease parts of their telephone networks to would-be rivals. To that end, we discuss the main reasons why sharing rules are sometimes imposed in markets like the market for local telephone service, and we then link those issues to the specific legal questions at issue in these cases. For those already well versed in those issues, by contrast, we have woven into our account a variety of new ideas about both the relevant legal analysis and the underlying economics. We explain, for example, how low access prices might encourage incumbents to invest in new infrastructure despite the intuitive argument to the contrary, and how the Commissions seemingly nonsensical pick-and-choose rule can actually accomplish important policy goals, working in essence as a statutory most-favored-nation clause. In the end, then, we hope this paper will have value both for those relatively well steeped in telecommunications policy and for those just beginning to learn these issues.

The Mediated Book

This paper, originally written in May, 2009, addresses the rise of the mediated book. With the rise of Google Book Search and ebook readers like Amazon’s Kindle, we will still browse and read books, but we will do so through a screen. Digital texts are inherently on-demand works and mediated texts can be updated instantly with new, continuously timely advertising. Advertising as a percentage of GDP has been relatively constant over time while print’s share has declined steadily. The rise of the new mediated books will change how we finance books and will change our understanding of the relative roles of content and technology in driving adver-tising.

The yin and yang of copyright and technology

Examining the recurring conflicts between copyright and technology from piano rolls to domain-name filtering.