Nothing has really changed at all. Innovation seems more about inventing a way to do an old thing that feels new enough to avoid legal scrutiny until a company gets large enough and the public angry enough that laws create regulatory capture.
Nothing has really changed at all. Innovation seems more about inventing a way to do an old thing that feels new enough to avoid legal scrutiny until a company gets large enough and the public angry enough that laws create regulatory capture.
And if I might say so, for a tech forum, there seems to be a remarkable number of luddites who sit mighty high on their horses as they sing the praises of Chesterton's fence while simultaneously baying over the stagnation of housing, transportation, and their flavor-of-the-week, dead-on-arrival revolution, etc.
Should we never have used GPS because a good map won't lead you into a desert? Should we stop using phones because a one-to-one conversation may end up as dead an art as Latin is a language? Not everything that was done before was done for the right reason. Not now or even then. They were done mainly because there was no other given choice or someone on a high chair said so and signed his name on a piece of paper declaring it as law.
I'd say it's beneficial that those regulations have been circumvented even if I don't necessarily cheer on the particular actors who do the circumventing or what they do afterwards. Innovation is about finding novel ways to get from A to B as speedily, efficiently, and effectively as possible. And if regulations create a roadblock to it, all the more reason to invent around them. After all, there wouldn't a modern desktop if it wasn't for Compaq engineers reverse-engineering and reimplementing IBM's BIOS.
The theme appears to be that innovation brings many benefits and great risks. I would advise appreciation of nuance and thoughtfulness. As we become a Kardashev Type I civilization, we could carefully consider the way we organize our society and the existential risks we create for ourselves. For the first time in our history, we have the ability to pretty much completely annihilate ourselves and we're only creating more ways to do it. Maybe some caution is due.
(1) https://daily.jstor.org/an-affordable-radio-brought-nazi-pro....
What is that supposed to be? It’s not a known concept. If you think it means something you should define it.
As a lawyer, it’s perfectly legal to circumvent a law by designing around it. Crypto does that perfectly. So does everybody else. Heck, the whole open source movement does it.
If instead you are saying that it’s good to find loopholes in laws that violate the spirit of the law, but not the letter of the law … well, you just explained why smart contracts are stupid and will never work.
Edit: by your definition, this “hack” was just innovation designed around the “law” of the smart contracts ;)
Weirdly, online advertising is in some cases more restricted than traditional broadcasting. I've never seen a movie pause half-way through so someone can go "By the way, Microsoft paid us $5,000,000 to feature this extremely close-up shot of a Surface with the branding visible", but that's a legal requirement for YouTube videos containing sponsored content.
I'm not sure if I am reading your comment correctly.
Regulatory capture doesn't sound like a desirable thing, and wouldn't do the desired regulating. What did/do you believe the definition is?
It's not a desirable thing for the public - plenty desirable for industry...
It worked out pretty well with Ajit Patel and the FCC... Or the CRTC and it's board members and adhoc meetings in bars/pubs with the telecom industry.
The stock market, oil/gas, telecommunications are all examples of industries that started as innovative with no regulation. Once established, they were regulated. The stock market got consumer protections. Oil/gas faced environment & safety regulations. Telecommunications face many regulations around zoning and providing rural and not always profitable access. In return, this regulation raised the startup costs so significantly that only the pre-existing large companies could adapt and new entrants effectively ceased to exist.
It's a bit of a tradeoff. As consumers, we get some benefits and the company gets their existence & rent guaranteed indefinitely. The same will happen with digital advertising and the gig economy. The public is already getting tired of the wild west and calling for regulation. This regulation will be twisted and controlled by the companies it impacts to secure their future.
You have misunderstood regulatory capture. Regulatory capture occurs when the regulator puts the interests of those in the industry ahead of consumers.
> In return, this regulation raised the startup costs so significantly that only the pre-existing large companies could adapt and new entrants effectively ceased to exist.
This isn't regulatory capture. Regulatory capture is things like making laws that it is only possible for incumbents to be licensed to do specific jobs.
For industries emerging from the innovation stage to the regulatory capture state, usually the first regulations increase the startup cost to some extremely high level that only the incumbents can support. Only in the advanced stages to governments grant monopolies to specific companies.
That's a very specific term with a specific meaning.